Advantages: Well worth learning Disadvantages: can be a bit of a minefield.
Whether it is for yourself or your offspring, buying your first violin can be a daunting prospect - how do you know what you will need? Hopefully, this will help.
Before you go shopping, ask around - your teacher if you have one or anyone you know who plays the violin, if you can get a recomendation of a good shop, this will make your job easier. Better still, try to elicite the help of someone who alerady plays - the advice of someone who knows their stuff can be very reassuring, as well as useful.
The violin - you can really spend as much or as little as you like - you can pick up second hand Chinese violins for very little (£40?) you can spend thousands. Obviously, if you are starting out, you won't want a hugely expensive instrument. Spend what you can afford. Make sure the body of the violin is in good shape - avoid anything ...
Bryn_Pearson 13.09.2002
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Violin
Advantages: Encourages self discipline, can be fulfilling Disadvantages: can be expensive
I admit it- I am one of those responsible for teaching those little blighters to play the violin!
The violin, it must be said has an unfortunate reputation. There are all those violin jokes about cats, earplugs etc. It is a shame. I actively encourage yougsters to try the violin. I always give a suitability assessment, and to be honest it is only very rarely that I find a child totally unsuitable.Most children can manage to achieve something if a few criteria are followed:
1: THE INSTRUMENT:
Buy the best instrument you can afford. No, don't take out a loan on a strad- find out if your child is the next Nigel Kennedy first! However, there are some grim kits around for about £70. I refuse to teach on them. The bows don't play properly and they often break. The violins themselves mostly sound foul and are not properly set up ...
water-witch 30.11.2001
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Violin
Advantages: Mutter's eloquence and sensitivity in older recording are enhanced here. Disadvantages: None at all!
As a fantastically talented eighteen-year-old, Anne-Sophie Mutter already awed me with her sensitive and thoughtful eloquence in her 1981 recording of the Brahms violinconcerto (with Herbert von Karajan directing the Berlin Philharmonic). However, there?s an even deeper understanding in Mutter?s reading of the Brahms piece on this newer disc.
This performance was taped live at the Lincoln Center?s Alice Tully Hall, New York City, in 1997. Kurt Masur conducts the New York Philharmonic in particularly inspired fashion. A difference of fifteen years separates the two recordings. In the time between, she married, had children, and then was widowed at a very young age.
When Mutter returned to her instrument, she would bring a greater strength, emotional depth and insight to her playing, lending a maturity and assuredness to her ...
![Hindson: Violin Concerto; Corigliano: Suite from the Red Violin [Hybrid SACD] -](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/89868191.jpg "Hindson: Violin Concerto; Corigliano: Suite from the Red Violin [Hybrid SACD] -")
