(orchestra playing Beethoven's 5th Symphony)
Hello, my name is Karen Stephenson
and I'm No. 2 Cello with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
I'd like to introduce you to my cello.
The body of the cello is made of wood,
normally maple or spruce.
At the top here we have the scroll.
And then four pegs,
which hold in place the four metal strings.
Which are
A the highest,
D,
G,
and C.
the thicket string at the bottom
and they reduce in thickness to the top string.
Now these four strings are drawn down the cello
and over the wooden bridge
and then into the tail piece at the end.
And at the bottom, we have the spike
which anchors us to the floor.
We tune the strings with the four pegs
and also with four tiny adjusters on the tail piece as well.
To make a sound
we can do two things
we can use the finger,
which is plucking or pizzicato.
(cello playing pizzicato)
Or, we could use the bow.
The bow is made of wood on the top,
and on the bottom, horse hair.
And we use this little screw here, to tighten it
and loosen it when we put it away
at the end of a busy day.
So, to make the sound
we draw the horse hair part of the bow
along the string, like this.
(cello playing)
We can do an attack
to make it sounds more exciting
(cello playing long note)
we can do short notes
(cello playing short notes)
or long notes
(cello playing long note)
and everything you can imagine in between.
So when we play with a bow
we set off a series of vibrations.
The string vibrates, which then
is transmitted through the bridge,
which makes the plates vibrate on the cello,
and the air on the inside vibrates as well.
There's a sound post which connects the top plate
to the back plate.
And all this air is vibrating and then the sound
comes out of the F-holes here.
So it's really
the body of the cello is an amplification device.
So we have the four open strings of the cello
(cello plays different strings)
But that wouldn't be very interesting if
we only played those.
So we need to use our left hand.
Now we have five fingers,
we number them one to four.
One, two, three, four.
Like this.
This is the first finger, (plays cello)
The second finger, (plays cello)
Third, (plays cello)
And fourth. (plays cello)
And that is called first position as well.
And then we can move our hand up, in different positions.
So this is fourth position.
One, (plays cello)
Two, (plays cello)
Three, (plays cello)
Four. (plays cello)
Now don't worry about the thumb,
because we can use the thumb as well.
And that just has a special symbol when we see it
written in the music.
And we can use the thumb higher up the cello.
(cello playing a scale)
The cello has an enormous range.
And it's been said that it's most typical
of the range of the human voice.
Composers often like to exploit this.
One of my favorite examples
is Verdi's Requiem, the Offertorio,
which starts with the cello section using the whole cello.
(cello playing Verdi's Requiem)
I love the role that the cello has in the orchestra
because we can play the bass lines,
we can be the driving force along with the double basses.
Under pinning everything in the orchestra.
But also as cellist,
we get given glorious melodies to play as well.
We get to play everything on the cello.
So were always kept very busy.
I'd now like to talk about vibrato.
Here is a note
without vibrato.
Have a look at my left hand.
(plays note without vibrato)
Without vibrato,
my left hand is very still.
Vibrato is a way we color the sound
and we rotate the fingers like this.
(plays note with vibrato)
And you can make different sounds,
you can do a fast vibrato.
(plays note with fast vibrato)
Very passionate.
Or you can do a very quiet,
poco vibrato.
(plays note with poco vibrato)
My teacher used to get me to practice vibrato
by going up and down the string and then gradually
getting smaller and smaller and smaller
until you get the rotations,
the feeling in the arm, correct.
Here is an example
of a well known piece for cello.
But I'm going to play it without vibrato first.
It's The Swan by Saint-Saëns.
(plays The Swan by Saint-Saëns without vibrato)
Not very interesting.
So here it is with some vibrato.
(plays The Swan by Saint-Saëns with vibrato)
An example of using a small amount of vibrato
is something that we do a lot in the Philharmonia
when everybody plays vibrato at the same time,
it can sound too much.
And in French music sometimes,
for example, we use poco vibrato
as in this passage from Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi.
(plays Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faun)
Next, I'd like to talk about pizzicato.
Which is plucking the string with the finger.
We can use any of our fingers,
most cellists use this finger,
but you can use this finger,
or all the fingers, (strums strings)
if you want to.
Here's an example of some pizzicato
from the repertoire
from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the Scherzo.
(plays Beethoven's Fifth Symphony)
We can also play chords,
strumming with the thumb, like a guitar.
(plays chords)
And we can make aggressive pizzicato sounds
like the Bartok pizz where you take hold of the string
pull it away from the finger board
and it slaps back down again.
(demonstrates Bartok pizz)
(orchestra playing)
In the Philharmonia,
we're often required to play very loudly or very quietly
so we need techniques to do this.
To play loudly, we play nearer the bridge
and we use a lot of heavy arm weight.
And sometimes a fast bow,
like in the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
(plays cello loudly)
We often have to play really quietly.
To do this we play over the finger board with the bow.
That's marked "sul tasto" in the part.
And we use a very light bow which is called "flautando"
as in the opening of Stravinsky's Firebird.
(plays Stravinsky)
We can use double stops
which is playing two or more strings
at the same time.
A very famous example of this is the opening of
Elgar's Cello Concerto.
(plays Elgar)
Another technique is using harmonics.
This is where you touch the string with the left hand.
But you don't press down.
(plays harmonics)
Those are called natural harmonics.
One example of this is in Stravinsky's Firebird.
(plays natural harmonics)
We can also do stopped harmonics
which are very difficult.
You put the thumb on the string
and then you use another finger
to touch the string higher up.
And you can get all sorts of different notes then.
(plays stopped harmonics)
This part of the bow is called the frog or the heel,
and we can use it to play very aggressively.
(plays cello aggressively)
This is the point of the bow
and we can do something called tremolando with that.
Which is when we move the bow very quickly
right at the tip.
(plays tremolando)
It's a lovely effect when all the string sections are
doing that at the same time.
If we want to make it even more mysterious
we can play it "sul ponte",
which means on the bridge.
(plays sul ponte)
A fun technique on the cello is
bouncing the bow or spiccato bowing.
Beethoven uses this in the Trio of his Fifth Symphony.
(plays spiccato)
Another thing we can do is
bounce the bow
and do lots of notes
but all in one bow.
This is called up-bow spiccato.
Violinists love doing it,
we don't get to do it very often,
but we do it sometimes in symphonies like
Mahler's Fourth Symphony.
First of all, I'll show you the bow stroke.
(plays up-bow spiccato)
We could also use ricochet bowing.
Which is when you really throw caution to the wind
and you actually throw your bow at the string.
A really good example of this is
Rossini's William Tell Overture.
(plays ricochet)
Shifting is when we move between two notes
on the same string.
Often something that people worry about
because it's a long way up
and it's a long way down.
(orchestra plays)
The key is
to make sure that you're comfortable
on the note that you leave
before you go up to the top note.
This is one of the cello solos from
Elgar's Enigma Variations.
(demonstrates shifting)
I think it's probably easier,
in some ways, to play the cello than the violin
because you don't have to hold it in the air all the time.
But we do get calluses on our fingers
and they can get very, very sore
particularly if you haven't played for a few days.
And also
one of the worst things is your spike slipping in concerts.
So you have to make sure that you get a
really good grip with the floor.
Also we have to be careful what we wear.
I find it much easier to wear trousers
than a skirt which might get in the way.
And also we can't wear any buttons,
or anything that rattles against the back of the cello.
And we can't wear dangly earrings
unless you just wear one on one side.
When I travel out and about with the cello
you get lots of comments from people like
"bet you can't get that under your chin" or
"what have you got in there, a machine gun?
Or your mother in law?"
I find it quiet amusing really.
And I don't mind carrying it around
because I have a fantastic, light cello case
which is made of carbon fiber
which actually means my cello, in its case,
weights less than certain other instruments
you might not expect.
And when we travel on airplanes, I'm very lucky because
I get to have a seat for my cello.
The number of ways you can fix or attach a cello
to a seat in a plane is unbelievable.
Sometimes we go on planes and there is about five men
per cello strapping it up with lots and lots of ropes
and lots and lots of fuss and bother.
And then other airlines, you get on and they give you
an extension belt and you do it yourself
and it's absolutely fine.
So if anybody is watching this from any airlines,
the extension belt is fine and we can do that ourselves.
There are many brilliant things you can do on the cello,
too many to list here, but here are some of my favorites.
The first is an impression of seagulls.
(imitates seagulls on cello)
A really cool thing you can do on the cello is
cello twirling.
Which looks great when you do it in a section.
Then you can even do a Mexican wave
of cello twirling.
(twirls cello)
Not a lot of people know this
but you can actually play the cello with pieces of fruit.
My favorite is an orange.
But I have used a grapefruit and a lemon.
So here we have
"The Swan" with an orange.
(plays The Swan)
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