TECHNIQUE
Cello warm-ups: the bow arm
How to prepare the whole body for efficient, time-saving repertoire practice
MATS LIDSTRÖM
Honorary associate and professor of cello at the Royal Academy of Music in London, UK
BORN Stockholm, Sweden
STUDIED WITH Maja Vogl, Leonard Rose, Channing Robbins, Lynn Harrell, Pierre Fournier
TEACHES Conservatoire students (junior and senior)
Students often tell me that they warm up by playing scales, but they forget that the whole repertoire is made up of scales, from the Bach Suites to Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, the Chopin Sonata and the Haydn concertos! We need to warm up in order to play scales, so that we can really benefit from our practice and use our hands effectively to communicate our feelings through sound, with minimum effort. We can save a lot of time by warming up all aspects of our playing before we begin work on our pieces. In this article I focus on warm-ups for the right hand, but as outlined in my book (see box, page 81), I recommend alternating these with left-hand warm-ups, which I will discuss in next month’s Technique article.
EXERCISES
The aim of these exercises is to warm up our control of the bow and bow arm, so that we can play in any dynamic and with any colour that we need. By the time we go on stage, the audience should feel there are no limits to what we can do.