Louder

I told my teacher last night about our first rehearsal with the orchestra. He asked me how it went. I told him that we all needed to get louder. So my lesson was mostly about how to play louder while staying relaxed. Easier said than done.

I have a bunch of new exercises to work on, to try to learn how to crank up my volume, stay relaxed, and not lose tone quality. There's no such thing as playing softly with an entire orchestra backing you up. My husband said that he can finally hear my cello all through the house now, over the TV and over a whole bunch of other things on. I told him that I need to be even LOUDER.

We had another false start with my Saturday chamber group. We thought we would have a string quartet. And I thought, hooray, finally I will get to play the cello! But, our violist couldn't make it again, and our second violinist comes late. So for quite a while it was just our first violinist and me. She brought Beethoven violin/piano sonatas so we read through #3 and #4. #4 is really nice - worth doing again. I love playing the sonatas because the piano is an equal partner with the violin. #3 and #4 had early opus numbers but were very clearly not Hadyn influenced--very much Beethoven's own voice. Lovely pieces. We started #5 (the "spring" sonata) when our second violinst showed up. I stayed on the piano while they played a Bach double violin concerto. Then our first violinst did an awesome job of being the viola while we played some string trios - one by Schubert, a few movements of a Mozart Divertmento, and a few movements of a Beethoven string trio. She had to sit out when the viola part got too low for the violin, and there were a few times when we had to stop while she figured out alto clef but it was sure nice to have a little time on the cello. My tone has improved a lot as well as my reading ability and it was fun to hear how much I've improved.

As they were leaving I asked how loud we were during the Popper. They both said that all of us needed to be louder....I think only the strings could hear us and that the brass couldn't hear us at all. I've got to figure out how to make my cello project more sound...