Popper Studies for Cellists
Janos Starker liked to say to cellists of almost any level that “there is nothing in your playing that the Popper Studies can’t fix”. He may have been right, and many excellent cellists will agree with him. Popper’s studies certainly do work on our thumbposition in an intensive and complex manner. If you can play the Popper studies, then you are definitely a very accomplished cellist.
For those of us who detest Popper, we can find a similar level of thumbposition concentration in compilations of thumbposition excerpts taken from the standard cello repertoire (click on the highlighted link).
There is however a way to make Popper’s studies more attractive: look at this video in which Popper’s Study No. 13 has had a jazz bass guitar and drum rhythm track added to it. Suddenly Popper becomes not only useful but also beautiful and a lot of fun !