Lesson and Chamber Group Notes

I had a good lesson on Friday. My teacher put the video camera on me to let me take a good look at my bowing, and it has definitely straightened out. It isn't good enough yet; I could see that my up bows were at a slightly different angle than my down bows, but at least they were straight going in one direction and within a fairly narrow range on the string. I can hear the difference in sound. I played "The Swan" at the end so that I could see and hear what I sounded like playing something other than scales or exercises. After pointing out some other things I need to work on, my teacher said that my playing was the most consistent it's ever been! So, progress! Yay! And so much more to work on! He has been reading Daniel Levitan's This is Your Brain on Music which I read a few months ago, so we had a good time joking about how many hours I had left to go on my 10,000 hours to become an expert.

I got to play cello this weekend with my Saturday chamber group. With people still out we were still only a piano trio. We played through a Raff trio (can't remember which opus) and the Clara Schumann trio (so that our other pianist could play/hear it). I think it was the first time I got to play the cello part for her trio - all of the other times we've played it I've been on the piano. We finished up with a Spohr trio. Hope next week one of our violas can come - and our other violinist - so we can get back to piano quintets (or some configuration other than piano trios, which are nice, but we were getting quite a bit of variety for a while).

My Sunday group was a hoot. Our other cellist, who has been playing the cello for over 60 years (I kid you not) was there after an absence of 3 weeks. I love playing with her. We played the Vivaldi G minor double cello concerto and had a blast. We're trying to get it gig-ready, which means that I probably ought to spend some time practicing it on my own...I only seem to play it when I'm with this group. We played through the first 3 movements of Dvorak's "American" quartet, which really gives the 1st violin a workout! The 2nd movement gives the cello some lovely parts to play, but pretty high - hate that false treble - and even playing an octave down it was getting way up the fingerboard. We finished by reading through Mendelssohn's 3rd string quartet (Op. 44, No. 1) - lots of fun - and not quite as tricky on rhythm as the Dvorak. What was encouraging (to me, at least!) was that I could hear that the bowing exercises are paying off - I could hold the volume of long notes much more consistently (not dying off when close to the tip of the bow!!!).

We got a note from our conductor! Orchestra rehearsal starts September 10th!