Posted on December 10, 2006 at 3:41 PM (MST)
Mr. Redrobe's excellent DVD largely credits finger vibrato for the "individuality" of sound created by the great violin masters of the early 20th century, rather than their use of gut strings or any particular violin. The fact that a player with a unique or characteristic sound can sound the same (i.e., like him or herself) regardless of the instrument played also suggests that technique is largely responsible. Kreisler's vibrato, "fingertip impulse vibrato" according to Mr. Redrobe, is quite different from arm or hand vibrato and is not primarily intended to alter the pitch of the note, but rather to impart a kind of energy to the string, which energy can be infinitely varied and personalized.
Mr. Redrobe indicates that fingertip impulse vibrato is accomplished by alternately pressing the string with the fingertip and releasing. The string never leaves the fingerboard and the fingertip never leaves the string. His superb analogy is to imagine a woodpecker who has had the tip of its beak superglued to a tree. Try as it might to peck at the tree, it gets nowhere. It's the same movement as opening and closing the hand, driven by the tendons in the arm that operate the fingers. If the hand and arm are completely relaxed they will move in a coordinated manner not unlike the arm and hand movements of Yehudi Menuhin in "Art of the Violin" but the arm and hand movements are passive/secondary and not the impetus for this type of vibrato, the active movement coming from the fingers. Mr. Redrobe states that Kreisler used only this type of vibrato as confirmed by conversations with Henry Roth and privately by Yehudi Menuhin.
According to Mr. Redrobe, aside from adding interest and complexity to the sound, vibrato allows you to play louder by strengthening the string, enabling you to exert more bow pressure and pull a bigger sound from the violin.
The DVD and other info can be found at: http://stephenredrobe.com/
