Kreutzer Etude #4
Kim Kaloyanides Kennedy, violin
Recorded at home January 2021
Since teaching via zoom, I have had to get creative with how to share sound goals. I have been doing a lot of recording examples for scales, arpeggios, pieces and now etudes. (I use BandLab, Acapella, YouTube, Google Drive and I share my screen in zoom lessons.)
Kreutzer #4: (Peter's Edition)
This etude is very straightforward, it is quite clear how it should be played, especially if you read French or German;). I used Google Translate to read the text at the top, and it basically says to learn staccato slowly, to keep the bow on the string between staccato notes, and put an accent on first and final notes to create a good line? My International Galamian edition does not have any instructions at the beginning. (Reminiscing...,my book has my teacher's handwriting in it asking for the first bar all in one bow in the upper half of the bow, and another variation all in the lower half, still all in one bow. I don't remember if I ever did this exercise as indicated by Kreutzer.)
The tricky part (done as Kreutzer intended) is how to handle the end of the bars into beginning of the next bars. You are always at the frog at the end of each bar and only ONE note starts the next bar. Should you use an ENTIRE bow to do one note down bow? I indeed did it this way ONE bar only, the bar after all the f,f,f,f's. All the other bars where I ended at the frog, I replaced the bow toward the upper half so the single note on one bow was closer to 6 inches long rather than 20. Is this cheating? I don't know, but I do know I hated how each start of each bar sounded when I tried it the other way. One would never play that way in real life, so there is no need to play like that here, although, learning to cleanly replace the bow to start fresh is a VERY useful technique. I highly recommend applying that while playing this etude. Another obstacle to overcome is getting EACH of the staccato notes to speak evenly, similarly and slightly crisply. Notice the accents are only on the first and last notes. It was very easy to accent other notes along the way or make them all sound accented. I'm sure you can still hear notes with accents that are not indicated in my recording. I did not get 100% scrupulous about that if the emphasis was helping somehow (harmonically, direction, rhythmic pillar etc).
Being able to do a clean and even up bow staccato in this fashion definitely prepares students to be able to do a nice easy back and forth staccato.
Side note: This is my first recording with my new sound equipment. Definitely an improvement over the last two with the incessant running fan! (It is possible I will re-record those.....)

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