Cello Video Lesson: How to approach Etude Op. 113 No. 5 by Sebastian Lee

Hello, and welcome to our monthly study challenge. I am starting with a fragment of study number five by Sebastian Lee, study Op. 113. It's a book of 12 melodic studies, and they're really perfect for studying your legato and slurs and also an quite sort of easy, intermediate position changes. So they are really covering the position from one to four for a second and third, and being really melodic beautiful, but not too difficult to practice your still long slurs legato. And this one, this study is particularly written for that, but also your shifts in easy positions. So in terms of your bow working, I'm going to talk a little bit about it later.

But it's not very different from the study number one by Popper, which I talked about in our first video of the series. So you could always start with this study first to work in your slurs and legato and string crossing in the first position. This study in a way is a little bit of a step up because first of all, the bowings are a little bit less regular. So it's not always the same amount of bow for every bar. In fact, sometimes you have full bar slurs sometimes half bar and less. So we need to sometimes save your bow, sometimes speed it up. But in terms of the left hand, you will have to manage your shifts in a successful way and position.

Let's now look at the shifts we have here in this study. So most basically you have two types of shifts. At least something. One is the one with the sort of destination finger. So let's say if you start with finger number one in one position, and you end up with finger two in another position, the shift I'm talking about right now is the one when you already slide with the second finger and these shifts typically happen on the beat. So let's say if you go from E first finger in the first position to the B flat in the fourth position on the D string, it'll look like that.

It's a very expressive shift and you have to use it sparingly, that doesn't always suit every music, but probably that suit this type of music, romantic music. This shape is typically most successful on the way up. So it wouldn't work that well if you wanted to do it going down, it sounds maybe a little bit out of taste sometimes. So let's say if you wanted to do... That's maybe suitable in some places, but nothing really in this study and not in many. The other type of shift is when you slide with the previous finger and only add your next finger at almost at the top or close to it. So for example, let's look something that is a little bit more separated in terms of finger. So from finger one to three, let's say in the same positions, so you will start with E and go to B... Or... It's a little bit more discreet. And typically it happens when you start sliding already on the previous bit.

So once again, the first one you start and you... Typically start already on a new bow and you slide with the destination finger. The other one, when you started on the previous bow... And you add the destination finger close to the end, both of these are possible, as I said, up and down, but the expressive shift is not really used very much on the way down and the other shift is most often used on the way down. So here you will have a chance to work on all of this, to start with even the first bar... You will have the time that shift from F four finger to A first quite well, so that you arrive on time on your A, you need to leave your F a little bit sooner and do it quite as discreetly... So you may slightly lighten up the bow, but not too much, not to the extent that you lose your legato... But what is really most important is the timing of it. So...

You want to be sliding earlier, so you can be on time on A. Then in between bars three and four, you have the other type of shift. So... Of course, it's a little bit exaggerated, but I think it suits this music since the times of when the study was written, 19th century romantic music. So you can also do the other type of shift here too. You could do... Which is really much more discreet, and it's also completely fine. So if you don't like to slide on the new bow and with the destination finger, you can just do... Start sliding and by the time you reach your down bow, you already with the new note ready. I will just repeat the other type once again, so you can have a closer look. Now I'm shifting on the new bow... Yes, so these are those two types and you can really decide which one you like more but I would recommend that you practice both of these in the study.

There's a particularly difficult moment in that study when it comes to shifts because you really have one after another. So this is when you go to... So here you really have a mix of types of shifts because the changes happened too soon to always use one type also because of the timing of the notes. So I recommend that you mainly go with the expressive slide going up and definitely the other more discrete slide on the way down. I will do it now with slow motion. So always sort of being there earlier on the next note going down, but you can afford expressive style of shift on the way up.

Now, in terms of your right hand, there is a variety of slurs. You already heard the beginning as you go on... So sometimes you will have the string crossing where you will use your fingers. Yes. To cross the string sometimes you will have shorter slides. Sometimes longer. We will go on a bit more. And as we arrive here, we now have much longer slurs because we have them over one bar. So those, you need to really practice with saving the bow... Just as we did in study number one, by Popper in the first study of the series, you will need to prepare your left hand in advance as well to avoid other string ringing before you get there with the left hand. I will carry on for now until the next bars.

So this is the same we had. Yes, we have preparing the left hand changes as well as using your fingers on the bow. I will go from there once again and we'll carry on afterwards.

Here, we switching back to shorter slurs, like at the beginning.

Happy practice, and I will see you next month.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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