Baroque-n Record: Playing Mozart on Period Instruments

By Catherine Cosbey: I am a modern violinist steeped in the world of modern string playing - so when the opportunity came up in 2024 to do a period recording of the two Mozart violin and viola duets, I was excited. And bewildered. How would I develop fluency with the equipment and style? I had dabbled in baroque orchestras and adored Quatuor Mosaïques (and many other great period performers), but I was far from being a card-carrying early musicker myself. As with most worthy projects, the task was harder and infinitely more rewarding than I imagined. It occupied the majority of 2024, my Cinderella story. Now that it’s done, CDs in hand and set to release in late January, I couldn’t be prouder!

And, having come out the other side, I wonder whether any of my fellow modern muggles might be curious about the process. On the chance it’s useful, I’ve chronicled the project, foibles and all, for anyone interested in the HIP (historically informed performance) approach but who isn’t sure where to begin. From the outset, I was thrilled and intimidated by the prospect of embarking on this project. It was an opportunity to develop a totally new take on Mozart (and the new/old irony isn’t lost on me!). It felt dangerous to take Mozart’s rarified, pristine music and try to make it fresh and human. Modern instruments do not preclude this, of course, but I was dazzled by Roger Norrington’s 1980s Beethoven Symphonies recordings with the London Classical Players, where early instruments are essential to the readings. Norrington has said in an interview that old instruments "teach [him] such a lot about the music." Like Norrington, I wanted to do away with modern convention, take evidence seriously, and let the instruments and the score tell me how to play. So I was inspired. But where to begin? Having jumped into the project with no idea how to swim, I first explored two streams. I listened and read a ton. My list was long, too long to give in its entirety, but some impactful recordings were the Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas with Malcolm Bilson and his protégés, Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas by Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin, Robert Levin’s Beethoven Piano Concertos, Elizaveta Miller’s Art of Transformation, anything by Elizabeth Wallfisch (who has become my musical idol!), the Eroica Quartet, Hausmusik, Trio Goya, and of course, Norrington’s Beethoven Symphonies. As for reading, I renewed an appreciation for musicological writing and found that beautiful insights into a piece’s structure could really change the way I hear and play it. I read a lot. Some favorites include Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style, and of course a book by my brilliant collaborator: Dorian Bandy’s Mozart the Performer. (If you’re interested in Dorian’s thoughts on the musical aspects of this recording project, he blogged about them for violinist.com last year.) When it came to playing, my first job was to get comfortable on the gut strings. I experimented with incremental changes to my modern violin, a resoundingly sensible method, I thought. Dip a toe in the balmy waters; put on one gut D. But no — big mistake! The difference between gut and steel strings is radical, and though the low-tension gut D gave richness to my sound, its width and tension were incompatible with my G, A, and E. Intonation became a nightmare, and the creaking string changes were outright ghoulish. Frustrated but undeterred, I went to the Gamut Tricolore Heifetz collection: Goldbrokat E, A gut (0.76mm gauge), D gut (0.78mm gauge), D gut (1.04mm – 1.06mm gauge), G gut/sterling silver (0.80 mm – 0.82mm gauge). Heifetz used these to make his magnificent tone, and they are designed to work together. I chose to use an emotional support steel G instead of the gut G. This was marginally better than the earlier experiment, but alas, the same problems arose. (Here’s looking at you, steel G!) I sheepishly aborted the guts after a few too many "what-is-Cat-doing-now?" looks in rehearsals. Going partway didn’t work. After these first fumbles, I tinkered on baroque instruments and even gave a few performances on the baroque viola - small, mostly covered roles that allowed me to get comfortable with the equipment (and pitch: something I’ll get back to later). But it wasn’t until March that I gutted my 18th c. German violin, a Georg Kloz, and started experimenting in earnest with strings and bows.

It was a maze to find the right combination of strings with the dizzying array of options: high twist, Venice twist, double wound, silver wound, varnished, un-varnished, half-rectified, beef, lamb, ram, length, gauge, width??! Unlike with modern strings, which are standardized and basically all work together, finding the right combination requires a lot of trial and error. Some strings play well together, while others scowl at the neighbors, the tension or timbre not getting along. (Stringking.net is an invaluable resource for sourcing high quality strings and information!) There’s no way around it. Make a doc, get a notebook, and jot down reactions until you’re set with what you like. As a side benefit, you’ll get good at tying knots! Many strings later, I settled on Toro .60 ram E, Toro .82 ram A, La Folia 1.10 ram D and Aquila light silver covered G. I’m sure this will change with time, but it pleases me for now. The bows I tried were an 18th c. French anonymous bow with Cramer tip and Dodds frog, a classical bow by René-William Groppe based on a 1780 original, and a Stephen Marvin 18th c. German copy. I would play a passage on each, noticing feel, string response, sound, buoyancy, and articulation. The Marvin produced a warm rich sound and had the vibrancy and sparkle I was looking for, perfect for the German music on the program. With the equipment settled came the task of figuring out how to use it. There were immediate problems. For one, I had trained in the Cleveland Orchestra motto "start from the string". But on gut strings, the notes clanged and sputtered like a rusty engine when I did. With this equipment, the motion of the bow should start exactly when the hair touches the string: a tricky adjustment given the finesse required to beautifully and precisely sculpt the start of a note. I had to refine my understanding of where each string is. Another big change is that the guts are infinitely more sensitive than the steel strings, and they demand that the bow hug them. I found that if I wasn’t exacting about which side of the string I played on, the string would hiss. String sides are important for sound on the steels, but you can get away with being careless. But the guts…they talk to you. They let you know. Downbows are on the east side of each string, upbows travel on the west. Short strokes are the opposite. I devoured videos of Pavlo Beznosiuk and Elizabeth Wallfisch, trying to capture the trajectory of their bows. Both violinists are elegant, yet they "dig" in. A common mistake for modern players is to play on the surface of the string. But it takes guts to play guts. It should feel like you’re pulling the bow through creamy peanut butter, generally using a slower bow than on the modern instrument. It took me a long time to get the sense of how deeply to sink, always with circular gesture, drawing the weight from the upper arm and back. Weirdly, unlike on the modern violin where I feel a weightlessness when playing intensely, I found myself spuriously pressing with my forearm, especially in sixteenth-note passages where the notes should articulate and sparkle. Modern bouncing bow strokes don’t work. I had to learn how to articulate with the bow on the string, using more weight and less bow. This was incredibly uncomfortable at first, and I took a long time to find the right combination of weight and bow. My method for solving the classical bow and gut string sound issues was to spend lots of time on the Dounis Daily Dozen bow exercises, listening for the purr and overtones. Eventually, the reliability and control started to come, though I am still searching for more depth and resonance. The added weight brought a new problem: The left-hand. As I used more intense bows, my left hand started pressing too. I had to retrain my fingers to relax with the string. The whole sensation of the gut under the fingertips is so different. The string width meant having to find different finger placements, and shifting, even semitone shifts, became an ordeal. When pressing too hard, the string becomes a Venus fly trap, sucking the finger into its belly, making light shifts impossible. With time, I began to love the sensation of the gentle gut string beneath my fingers. The new left hand position not only accommodated the wider string but allowed for crawl shifts instead of the trombone shifts. Ruggiero Ricci’s books, Ricci on Glissando and Left Hand Violin Technique were invaluable. His method is founded on the idea that you don’t need the chin rest, it just gets in the way, and those books are therefore compatible with violin technique from the 18th century that creeps around the instrument. Over-articulating with the left hand was another bad habit. Slapping the fingers down on the fingerboard, articulating pitches in the rests ... I traded in these habits for a soft, gentle touch with a much slower, wider vibrato. Then there was intonation. Oh, intonation. I never thought of myself as a person with true perfect pitch, a sibling at best. But alas, while attempting to play at A=430, I found out that my sense of pitch is cemented to 441Hrz. Even more problematic, the overtones of the guts threw off my ability to hear the pitch centers. I felt like a fish out of water, flapping around, unsure if I was close. I had to rebuild the intonation infrastructure. This was the most challenging part of the endeavor; my ear did not want to adjust, and though I would nudge it down a few cents, I often ended up bringing my modern playing with me. So I had to rethink. I worked on overtones, on finding the resonance of the instrument and letting that guide my ear instead of my inner pitch concept. Of course, a life-long inner voice player, I already think of intonation vertically, tuning to harmonies instead of melodies, but interestingly, I had a hard time navigating my way around harmonic intonation on the guts and at the new pitch. It didn’t help that I was simultaneously reshaping my left hand for the new strings and the chinrest-free playing (which, by the way, for this album, I caved and used the chin rest—though as I write this I am now playing chinrest free). All my senses were confused! With time on the Ricci scales and incredibly slow overtone practice, my intonation got better and better. Now six months post recording, and with another recording under my belt since this one, intonation is even more comfortable. It amazes me that the mind really is flexible. At first, I couldn’t play anything at 430 or 415 (the lower-pitch tunings used in period performances). My fingers would instinctively adjust to find A=441 like I was looking into a terrible funhouse mirror. Now I can find myself at 415, 430, and 441, and am happier and happier. (My husband tells me that Bach at A=410 is next, but that might be a Herz too far.) This is only the beginning of my journey with historically-inspired playing. Ars longa, vita brevis. The project was a special meeting point for Dorian and me. We both loved Mozart and chamber music, but in different ways—and in making this album we brought together the knowledge from our two musical worlds. This is, of course, only one path, and there are surely many ways to enter the HIP world. All the same, I hope this gives some ideas to others who are curious about exploring early violins. Happy practicing! You might also like:

• Diary of a Recording: Mozart’s Duos for Violin and Viola
• Violinist.com Interview with Baroque Violinist, Stanley Ritchie: 'Before the Chinrest'
• Interview with Baroque Violinist Rachell Ellen Wong: Recipient of 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant

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