It was a lot of fun on Sunday, playing for our friends in our fearless leader's lab. The acoustics were wonderful; everyone sounded great, and we had a lot of fun.
we played the Mendelssohn octet - the best we've every played it. The funny thing about performances was that I had trouble where I've never messed up before, and I nailed some of the really hard passages. That was true of everyone else too. There were parts that sounded really amazing.
The program was
Handel - Entrance to the Queen of Sheba
Mendelssohn - Octet
Vivaldi - flute concerto
a Telemann violin duet
Rabinowitz - 4 pieces for string quartet
Vanhall - flute + string quartet
Vivaldi - Summer/Winter
I played the keyboard to accompany our fearless leader playing the violin for the last Vivaldi piece. He sounded really great. I couldn't figure out why I would lose him, but yesterday he told me that he had dropped beats here and there and messed with the tempo and wasn't sure how I managed to stay with him. It helped that I could read his part while I was playing. I had fun playing and improvising around what he was playing, but for a while I couldn't figure out why I wasn't staying with him. We did start and end together (that's always a victory!) and I certainly had fun playing (liked the challenge of figuring out what to improvise).
2 comments:
In our string quartet, we always consider it a victory when we start and end together. And the rule is that if you have notes left over when everyone else is done - you just stop playing. It's considered rude to try to finish your part. HA! Yes, we set high standards ;-)
we have similar standards ;-)
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