Feast

Today we had 6 of us, 2 violas no less! For a long time my Saturday chamber group has been 3 of us playing piano trios. I love piano trios but we were longing for a change, and I wanted to play the cello. It started last week when I was gone, but for some reason all sorts of people have found out about our group and are asking to join...

A new violist joined the group. She said that she began playing 7 months ago after a 20-year break. She fit right in and we are happy to have another violist. A string chamber group like ours can never have too many violas! The leader of the other group I play with on Sundays was able to join us today. He is the versatile person who plays violin, viola, and cello, and today he got to play each one (not at the same time, of course!). A new person, a flautist, came too. I felt bad for her. This group reads through music, sometimes not too much slower than speed, and she could not play with us. We had her double with our first violinist, but she spent most of the time sitting there not able to play. We slowed down one fairly easy piece quite a bit, to try to have her join in, but she couldn't keep up even at a slow speed. So, we went back to playing faster. I wonder if she'll come back...this shows how hard it is to find a group to play that is at the right level. This group has been so patient with me during my efforts to keep up. Everyone has been playing for a long time and playing with people who play better than me over the past 2 years has helped me improve my playing.

We started with string trios - a Beethoven Divertmento and a Schubert trio. Then our new violist came and we switched to a Mendelssohn quartet. Then another violinist came and we played quintets for the rest of the time. We played through some of the Schubert 2-cello quintet, the Vivaldi g-minor double cello concerto, and a Mozart string quintet (2 violas! what a luxury!). We played for a very long time today. It was so much fun! My fingers still hurt, though!