After watching the proms a new expression has crept into my
vocabulary. It’s an expression used to describe someone that is concentrating
so hard, or that is so caught in the moment, that their face seems to be
afflicted with some sort of muscle spasm and otherwise normally
featured, even beautiful, people are transformed into contestants from a
gurning competition.
I call it violin face; an over emphasis of joy, angst,
sadness, or chin ache that proclaims the professional violinist is feeling
deeply for his art. Just why do violinists pull such strange faces? Sometimes
it looks like they have constipation, other times diarrhoea or even (God
forbid) a stroke! Just what's going on?
We’ve all seen it. From Yehudi Menuhin to Nigel Kennedy, Vanessa
Mae to Scala, Basil Rathbone to that Cumberbatch chap, they all pull those
funny cartoon faces whenever the pick up their instruments. Even that bloody
smug André Rieu runs the full emotional spectrum from A-B whenever he’s on the
fiddle.
It seems that concert violinists must feel things far more
deeply than the rest of us. Or at least that’s the way it looks judging by the
range of expressions that pass across their faces when they’re playing. I can’t
imagine a car mechanic or a plumber contorting their features to represent their
innermost feelings as they fit a new tap or change a spark plug. Even most
actors appear a little wooden when compared to Nicola Benedetti in full
violining flow.
