Thanks, Ulla. It was very pleasant to listen to this video, and I know what you mean about Mairead’s bow hold. Very “fiddlerish” here: but, I’ll bet she didn’t do that in her graduate and postgraduate classical violin exams!
In such a performance the sound is so “doctored” by the mixer who had loaded this sound with “suitable reverb” and used the graphic equalizer toys to get the sound the audience wants.
The contrast in approaches to bowing is illustrated by looking and listening carefully to the three instructors on this site. Hanneke shows a particularly strong influence of classical training, I think, as does Casey, as he writes above. All three have ways of being excellent, mind.
Please understand these are just comments I offer, and are not meant to be criticisms or evaluations or preferences.
The whole topic was triggered in my mind when I watched the Gordon Stobbe bowing video, and to my mind he was suggesting a bowing technique (fingers straighten on up-bow and curve on down-bow)that was exactly opposite the classical technique (fingers curve on up-bow, straighten on down-bow), and it set me thinking about which path to follow.
At this point I am finding I can get a lot of finger and wrist “action” if I play my short Celtic bowings at the centre of the bow. My wrist in particular is much tighter if I try to bow quickly at the tip, which is where I have moved away from recently.
Anyway, these are just innocent musings, and I might change my mind entirely in a few weeks. All the best.
