Three bows are better than one: Nancy Zhou shows off the tools of her trade

Artists sometimes use multiple instruments on an album, but what about multiple bows? Violinist Nancy Zhou shares details about the three different bows employed on her upcoming album of solo works

A solo artist creating an album has many factors to consider during the production process. These include repertoire, recording venue, production team – not to mention the tools of the craft, the artist’s instrument and bow. Artists are lucky if they have a fine instrument and bow to play with already, and often the consideration ends there. Some artists might be super lucky to play many different instruments on one album – recent examples include Arabella Steinbacher’s latest where she utilises her 1718 ‘Benno Walter’ Stradivari and the 1744 ‘Sainton’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, or Janine Jansen’s 2021 mammoth undertaking pairing 12 Stradivari violins with a range of repertoire.

But how many artists use multiple bows in a solo recording? Violinist Nancy Zhou has done just that in her latest album Stories (re)Traced, comprising solo works by Ysaÿe, Bartók, Kreisler and Bach.

Zhou uses a c.1845 Dominique Peccatte bow, courtesy of Benjamin Lyon, for Ysaÿe Solo Sonata no.4. For Bartók’s Solo Sonata and Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo, she opts for a bow by François Nicolas Voirin, dated between 1872-5, that used to belong to Leonidas Kavakos. For Bach’s B minor Partita, she uses a transitional bow of unknown origin, its loan facilitated by Seth Novatt.

Why did Zhou decide to use different bows for the repertoire on this album? On the transitional bow, she was intrigued to try it after being unable to secure a baroque bow for the Bach. ‘I fell in love with it,’ she says. ‘Because of the airiness and lightness that you get from a transitional bow, it’s a better compromise for me,’ she states, having been trained most of her life to use modern bows that are built to sustain the sound and equip the violin in bigger spaces.

It made sense for Zhou to pair the transitional bow with the Bach Partita, which she regards as essentially a set of variations, and stylised dances. The transitional bow allowed her to execute the terraced dynamics and light-hearted dance feeling associated with the Partita. She migrates her bow hold a few millimetres further up the stick from the frog, somewhat Baroque-style, and notes the amount of bow hairs is significantly fewer than one would find on a modern bow.

Looking at it, the bow is fairly unadorned: ‘It’s very modest and it’s not the most cosmetically elegant thing,’ Zhou says. ‘But I think that definitely contributes to the light-weighted-ness.’

‍

Read the rest of the article here.