PULLING 'STRINGS'

posted by James Reel

    The latest issue of Strings magazine is online, and a fair chunk of it is by yours truly. Most prominent is the cover feature on a fine violinist with whom you may be unfamiliar:

    Yumi Hwang-Williams started playing new music quite casually, back when she was a violin student at the Curtis Institute. At the time, the school didn’t have a big composition program, and getting new scores performed was pretty informal. “The composers were there, you’d make friends, and they’d ask you as a favor to learn a piece for a class or concert,” recalls Hwang-Williams.
    Not exactly high-profile premieres back then.
    Today, in contrast, the violinist spends a great deal of her time playing freshly inked scores by such leading composers as Christopher Rouse, Michael Daugherty, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Thomas Adès. Most of these opportunities come to her via her work as concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Cabrillo Music Festival, in both cases under conductor Marin Alsop.
    “She’s obviously someone I think very, very highly of,” says Alsop, who moved this year to the Baltimore Symphony. “For a violinist of her caliber in this stage of her career, if you have the talent it’s a wonderful way to make a statement by championing these new works rather than yet again playing the Mendelssohn concerto. Why bother with that? She can bring something unique and new to all these new pieces. She’s an extremely conscientious musician. She likes to delve deeply into the music, and she’s become close with the composers whose works she’s performed.”

    You’ll find the whole article here. Then, if you’re a practicing string player, you may want to move on to my article on warm-up techniques. I admit that I took the lazy way out on this piece: One of the sources is a friend of mine, Tucson’s own Harry Clark, cellist of Chamber Music Plus Southwest; the other is my sister-in-law. Finally, the magazine reprints an article I wrote several years ago on how string players can master the fiddling technique called the chop.