lenasv. said:

Imagine now a French violin sonata with a slow romantic movement that is played high on the G and D-strings, moving up and down a lot over the strings, and lots of chances to nice glissandos,

You are playing this now in a performance, maybe a concert or so.

Suddenly, you realize that the hand sweat (even though you tried drying it off on your clothes before) makes your hand stick. All small position changes are especially tormented, you end up at the wrong place (hence play falsely) and every glissando is abrupted by the friction...and also ends up falsely. Hand sweat creates friction and vertical movement along the violin gets impossible.

How do you handle it? How do you get rid of the hand sweat, or learn to play cleanly despite it?

This is a great question Lena and nice to see you here again.

First of all, I normally don't sweat much but when exercising or in a hot environment I can sweat like made. A few times under very potentially embarrassing situations I have felt a slight sweat attach but kind of rare for me.

If you look at my video of when I played Bach's Chaconne I was under these intensely hot lamps while dressed in a monkey suit and sweating like a pig. This is terrifying when we are not used to it. Though my problem was that I was sliding around too easily.

• Anyway, I know what you mean and the best way to prepare for this is to learn your positions without slides as well as with.
• Secondly, when shifting be as loose as possible with minimum connection on the slides. Very relaxed contact with your fingers on the string.
• Lastly, some people use hand cream but you need to find a non greasy type, to keep the feeling consistent.

Good luck for next time.