..two steps back

Hvaing written about how well things were going it was probably inevitable that it would all go a bit pear shaped.  I have been unwell for the last two days and not been able to play - not too ill to go to work but by the evening it hurts too much to breath normally to even contemplate playing.  I feel like I've lost all momentum.  I am meant to be going to orchestra tonight - hopefully I will be well enough and will have enough residual stamina to get through . It could be a hard evening.

the joys of Spring

I haven't written about lessons for a couple of weeks but they have still been happening and have been particularly good too.

I don't know why the last couple of lessons have left me with a spring in my step but I think it maybe a combination of things:

1. IT'S SPRING!  More importantly my lesson now starts and ends in the light, last night I even got home before it was dark.  This shouldn't really make a difference but it does.  Just having blossom on the trees lifts me quite a bit and makes everything seem better.

2. No nerves in my lesson - ever since I blogged about being nervous and not being able to play properly in my lessons the problem seems to have gone away!  My lesson is 10 minutes earlier than it used to be, which means I tend to arrive from work and go straight in rather than sitting for 10 minutes in my car waiting to go in - don't know if that has helped or whether it is due to seeing my teacher more "outside lessons" at orchestra....either way it is good.

3. I think I've had a step up in my playing recently.  These are magical things that seem to occur periodically in instrument learning, for me at least.  I seem to spend months practising and grappling with certain aspects without apparently getting anywhere - and then somehow my brain and fingers  suddenly sort it all out and everything sounds a bit better for no apparent reason.  I feel like I've had one of those step forwards recently - my vibrato is starting to come out a bit more naturally and my tone is starting to ring more truly and clearly, dynamic range is coming on and my fingers are becoming more fluent.   Still a long way to go of course - especially on breathing and stamina, but I feel like progress is being made.  This may all be illusory of course and just down to the fact that.....

4. I have a really good reed at the moment!

Yesterday's lesson was spent mainly on the Mozart Quartet first movement, pulling it pieces phrase by phrase trying to get the note endings right, staccato lengths, phrasing in place.  Mozart is all about the details.

Next week we are going to start on reed making.  I'm quite excited.

A night of Russian Music

Saturday was our orchestra concert, our programme was:

Borodin - Steppes of Central Asia
Borodin - Petite Suite
Glinka - Ruslan and Ludmilla
 ~ interval ~
Mussorgsky - Gopak
Mussorgsky - Night on Bare Mountain
Tchaikovsy - excerpts from Sleeping Beauty

It generally went a lot better than I expected it to.  The afternoon rehearsal was really rather ropey in parts and I was a bit worried that it would all fall to pieces a bit.  I should have known that my fear was unfounded.  There were some challenging moments on the night, a few entries in the Glinka were not quite where they should be,  we were not quite together for parts of Bare Mountain.  But, overall, I think it was the best we had ever played the programme as a whole and, from my perspective at least, there were a few spine tingling moments that made me (once again) proud to be part of this orchestra.  The shimmering violins in the Steppes of Central Asia sounded just magical, our 80+ year old Cor player who has been struggling with the solo part really pulled it out of the bag on the night and really did herself, and us, proud.  The sound of the full orchestra really going for it at the beginning of the Glinka made my heart sing. In Bare mountain we all nailed the sudden stop before it begins winding up with the bassoon chromatic scale....you could have heard a pin drop.  The solos at the end of the piece with flute and clarinet were just beautifully played.  I really enjoyed my duet with the flute in the Sleeping Beauty waltz and I managed to get the scale right in the middle of it. 

I hope that the audience enjoyed it as much as we did.  We had a modest but respectable number of people there.  I do wonder sometimes if amateur orchestras at our level are actually more fun to be in than to listen to - certainly our audience could have heard better performances elsewhere.  But I think an amateur concert is about more than just playing music.

I loved  this  article about amateur orchestras - which can be summed up by the following quote:

“A typical effort will be littered with a continuum of faults. The problem is that audiences, weaned on the synthetic perfection of commercial recordings, tend to be unthinkingly intolerant of faults in even live professional performances, let alone amateur ones. I argue (long and hard) that audiences must tailor their expectations, just as do those who tolerate the sound of ancient recordings, to 'listen through' the surface imperfections to the music that lies beneath. The tolerant are richly rewarded. Enthusiastic amateurs, perpetually striving against their limitations, restore to Music what is lost to the prosaic professional: the elements of risk and danger; the familiar becomes new, challenging, exciting!”

On Saturday we certainly stepped out of our comfort zone,  it was risky for us but exhilerating to feel like we succeeded in pulling it off.  Now on to the next one, continuing to strive against our limitiations...

Practice really does work - a reminder

My lesson last night seemed to whizz past really quickly last night, some weeks they just do.  Most pleasing was my Study (no11).  It was very different to the previous ones, slower, shorter but with lots of trills to get both my head and fingers around - all in Db major as well which isn't the nicest key to play in at the best of  time.  I particularly liked being able to see a definite and substantial improvement over the two weeks I practiced it.  I know that practice leads to imrpovement but sometimes it can be so gradual to be imperceptible over a short period of time.  It can be quite dispiriting sometimes, especially as awareness and sensitivity to shortcomings often grows at a faster rate than skill which makes it feel like I'm gradually getting worse rather than better!  This study was one that I definitely couldn't play to start with, the trills needed so much thought to work out which fingers I should be trilling and then how to do the turn aruond at the end.  The trills themselves were uneven and at one point I felt like I would never put it all together.   But somehow in that two weeks something clicked, my finger muscles developed and something slowly changed so that it changed from something I couldn't play to something I could.  It certainly wasn't perfect, there is still plenty of room for improvemet but it was a long way from  where it was two weeks ago.  Which just shows that practice is really doing something, even when it feels like it isn't.