practice and other notes

My teacher recorded me playing Bach Arioso at my lesson on Friday. He had me play it with a recorded accompaniment track, thinking that I'd relax more if I was playing with something else. He was right; it was fun playing with the 'piano' because it helped me keep the beat steady. I was pretty happy with how much I've improved since the last time he recorded me playing it, about 1 year ago. For the first time I asked for the file - I'll probably post it in the cellobloggers space.

For the past few weeks he's had me work on loosening my right wrist and to practice making my fingers very flexible. It's starting to pay off, but I noticed that my stress response is still to tighten up on vibrato (at least for the very first time on the Arioso I actually kept playing vibrato throughout the note even when stressed out!) and to tighten up my wrist. At my previous and at this lesson he's had me starting to work on keeping my fingers flexible while crossing strings. Never a dull moment!

Today for our chamber group we were back to a piano trio. Since it's been quite a few weeks since we had this configuration, it didn't feel too bad. I was glad to be on piano because my right thumb is a little torn up and sore (thank goodness for bandaids!) so playing the piano was pretty nice to give it a rest. We made a cool discovery, playing Saint-Saens Piano Trio No. 1 in F major. What a lovely piece. Then we attempted to play the Beethoven Piano Trio #5, the "Ghost" but the ghost movement eluded us.. we started to play it but ended up giving up...slow movements weren't our friends today. Fortunately we had a rousing finish with Clara Schumann's piano trio. What a nice day!

I think I'm off tomorrow - most of my Sunday group is out of town. That means I'll have time to practice for chamber orchestra...Monday we played a Boccherini symphony and a Stamitz symphony, and got warned that we'd better practice the Dittersdorf symphony that we will be playing on Monday (which I've been diligently practicing at the end of my practice sessions)

and later this week it's travel time again, 3 weeks in a row :-( thougth I was going to get a break but I have these 3 weeks, then a break, and then September I'll start traveling more again....

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!

This headline is a palindrome! Why?

Last night we had the first rehearsal of the chamber orchestra that I was invited to join. We played Haydn's Symphony No. 47 in G major. The Minuet and Trio are written "al Roverso", meaning that the minuet is played through once forwards, and then played backwards. The Trio is played the same way, once through forward and then played in reverse. Hence the name, "the Palindrome". If you think sight reading is hard, try sight reading from right to left (although our conductor might have argued that explaining to us what we were supposed to do was harder)!

The first rehearsal was fun! Our conductor wants to keep the group small. We still need a few more players, but he wants 6 first violins, 6 seconds, 4 violas, 4 cellos, 2 basses, 2 oboes, and 2 french horns - 26 for those of you who are counting.