This is a fragment of a blogpost I put in the sister blog (Don't Wait For the Movie) recently.
When I wrote the Helen stories, I had her playing my favorite pieces, naturally. I had listened to recordings of these pieces for years and years, but I hadn't seen them being played! I recently watched a famous violinist play one of these pieces, and I was startled at how different her playing style actuall was, from how I had imagined it. And now that I think of it, many of the violinists play that way; that is, they sway to the music, as though they were dancing.
I'm not sure whether this is a modern thing; pop singers, of course, use their entire bodies to make their performance more exciting, so it could be that classical musicians follow suit. Come to think of it, the musicians I used to watch on YouTube were usually foreign: German, or Japanese, and they kept their bodies relatively still.
When I described Helen playing, I described her as being relatively still. I don't think I really like this dancing about, though it is the expected thing these days.
Well, I'm no violinist, I want to make that perfectly clear, so my descriptions of musical performances are from the point of view of an outsider!
I wish you all a wonderful new year!
Kay Hemlock Brown
