What is true violin legato?

Legato, from the Italian legare, which means “to bind /tie together,” is one of those words that has taken on various meanings in the past, and remains varied in its interpretation today. Is it a bow stroke? Is it a type of articulation? Is it an expressive idea, or relic from the past? I would say all of the above! Most crucially, it is a way of sounding – a sense of intense gravity between notes. It is an act of striving towards something, and the resulting line is always greater than the sum of its individual notes. All of this must be heard, experienced and felt – it cannot be described. In this latest edition of my BestPractice Violin Masterclass series, we will try to excite all of the senses so that we may deeply feel the legato tradition and produce a beautiful cantilena.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
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00:00 - What is Legato?
02:10 - History of Bel Canto and Legato
05:59 - Basics of Legato Technique
06:55 - Galamian Exercise for Fundamental Legato
08:40 - [my variations on the exercise]
10:43 - cavaet!
11:55 - LEFT HAND LEGATO
12:45 - LH during string crossings [Kreutzer No.14]
13:47 - LH clarity during legato [Rachmaninoff Vocalise]
15:11 - Rhythm during legato
15:38 - Sensitivity of right-hand fingers
16:45 - Impulse Vibrato [Mozart Violin Concerto no.4]
19:06 - Shifting in Legato [Mendelssohn Violin Concerto]
22:31 - Exercise to improve hiding shifts
22:59 - Expressive shifts (portamenti)
24:42 - RIGHT HAND LEGATO
25:02 - Breath of the sound [Brahms Violin Concerto]
27:05 - Exercise for a ‘shape-shifting’ hand
29:54 - Tricky spot for legato in the Brahms
31:10 - Bow distribution
31:51 - SON FILE exercise for development of sound
33:57 - Legato doesn’t mean no emphasis on certain notes
34:52 - Ties / Slurs vs Legato
35:45 - Preview of Part 2 !
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Arguably more important than the quality of the notes themselves is how we bind them together. The concept of legato therefore hinges on an acute sensitivity to what is between the notes. I find this to be a universal quality in musical traditions around the world. Take, for example, Indian Classical music: entire emotional and narrative concepts are embedded into the journey one takes between notes. It’s actually formalized into techniques called kampitam, and various gestures such as meend, gamak, and jaaru represent a shared need to weave something sublime into the fabric of notation. The genre-hopping western classical violinist Gilles Apap spent years studying this art form and explores this very concept here: https://youtu.be/3BDlvFTFrdY. Can we draw some parallels between these sonic values and the emblematic portamenti of Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, George Enescu, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh and other greats? To this day, these techniques and aesthetic principles remain a sort of idiosyncrasy in the violin world. I imagine a day when they are much more than that – perhaps even formalized and widespread modes of expression, as their counterparts are in the Indian Classical tradition.