Unsung heroes of the violin section

Dan Nobuhiko Smiley is principal second violinist for the San Francisco Symphony. He laughs at his title: “Sounds like an oxymoron. How can you be a principal and second at the same time?”

Not every concertgoer realizes that the sea of violins in a symphony orchestra consists of two distinct sections. The first violins generally “knock out the high melodies,” as Smiley puts it, playing the themes that people walk out of the theater humming. The second violins most often provide the oom-pah-pahs.

“Playing second fiddle” might connote being second-best, but the preparation for playing first or second violin is exactly the same. “You learn concertos and the brilliant, virtuosic stuff,” Smiley explains.

And second violinists seem utterly attuned to the orchestra as a single entity and to their contribution to it.
 
“The orchestra is not the place for virtuosity," Smiley says. "In fact, often the ‘virtuosos’ can be the problem in certain musical situations. Blending is everything."

Read more about second violinists in this Sunday's Arts & Books article, the final installment in a long-running series about orchestral musicians and their instruments.

And for the rest of the series, click here.

— Constance Meyer

Photo: An array of violins in a Los Feliz shop. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Not even Professor Auer knew it all

In my story about Abram Shtern, a little-known but extraordinary violin teacher living in West Hollywood, I noted that among history's violin pedagogues, the most famous was Leopold Auer (1845-1930). What got cut for reasons of space, however, is that not even Auer was infallible.

One reason? He pronounced Tchaikovsky's 1878 Violin Concerto, which was originally dedicated to him, unplayable. (As a result, the composer rededicated it to Adolph Brodsky.) Today, of course, the concerto is a mainstay of the standard repertoire.

Ironically, though, Auer was in part responsible for the work's popularity, because he taught it to all his concertizing students. Now, every serious violin student must learn it, and it is a must at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. And as it happens, Shtern taught it to a number of Tchaikovsky competition winners, including Ilya Grubert and Ilya Kaler.

-- Constance Meyer

Photo credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times