The Way They Play Book 8

Reference Biography Instructional Collector's Item Music Education Classical Music History Violin Technique

The Way They Play Book 8 (Paganiniana Publications, 1980 hardcover first edition) is the volume string teachers, collectors, and serious violin buffs keep on the permanent shelf. Henry Roth and Samuel Applebaum distilled decades of master-class wisdom into 200-plus photo-rich pages that show exactly how Heifetz, Milstein, Oistrakh, Stern, and twenty other legends held the bow, set the left hand, and produced their trademark tone. Because the book went through only one small print-run before the plates were retired, clean copies in the original cloth binding are now scarce in commerce; this unmarked, tightly-sewn copy rates “very-good-plus” and comes from a smoke-free home.

Inside, you’ll find frame-by-frame sequences shot at 24 fps, close-ups of chinrest modifications, and the only published measurements of the great players’ personal set-ups—information that never migrated to later digital manuals. Roth’s narrative weaves biography with practical advice: how to copy Menuhin’s relaxed vibrato without tension, which of Francescatti’s fingerings solve the “impossible” Wieniawski passages, and why Primrose shifted his thumb to the frog for col legno effects. The 1980s-era photos capture the last generation who learned without shoulder-rests, making the book a visual time-capsule as well as a technique bible.

For advancing students, the annotated repertoire lists cross-reference each artist’s commercial recordings, so you can hear the bow-stroke while you study the photo sequence. Teachers value the troubleshooting index that matches common faults to the master’s solution; collectors prize the original dust-jacket art and the sturdy Smyth-sewn signatures that open flat on any music stand. Whether you’re restoring an old German violin, coaching a prodigy, or curating a vintage music library, Book 8 delivers the reference details that later paperbacks left out—still cited in conservatory bibliographies four decades on.

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