A Vague Cello Update

I missed a week of orchestra and a cello lesson while I was away, and my lesson this weekend has also been cancelled because my teacher is out of town for her birthday. I have no problem with that; I will just work on my Bach gavotte on my own. I will turn it into a celloy operatic aria, and surprise my teacher when we finally do get together again at the beginning of May. (May! Good grief.)

We had a group lesson on Sunday, where only half the older students could make it (the younger ones have their own group lesson just before we do). It was pretty focused, though, and things are starting to come together. My teacher ended up deciding to transpose the accompaniment for one of the quartet pieces, so I'm transposing it on my own, something I do because I think it will be good for me, but I'm always worried I will make tonnes of mistakes.

This past rehearsal at orchestra we went in early. There is a Beaver colony that meets in the church basement right before we use it, and they arranged for us to do a presentation for them. It was a lot of fun. They had a basic intro before we got there, and a chance to explore the timpani, then they coloured some handouts while we all set up. Our conductor introduced the instruments one by one, having the principal of each section play the first phrase of "Twinkle" so the boys could hear how they sounded different. Then we played the first half of the first movement of the Haydn Symphony 83 that we'd done for the last concert so they could listen for the chicken theme, and after that we played one of our new pieces, Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance march no. 4. It was very enjoyable; they were bright and responsive. When things were breaking up at the end their leader told us that they were the biggest group in the West Island; other colonies had between five and ten kids, but they had thirty! "I like to think it's our great programming," he said.

Then we spent the entire night on the first movement of the Mendelssohn, with a play-through of the second movement at the end. Lots of really hard work. Our conductor assures us that the first movement is the hardest thing in the concert. If pressed to name a favourite symphony of all time, I would have to say it is this one, Mendelssohn's Reformation symphony, so I am loving every single moment of this. Playing a piece of music in orchestra means I get to break music down and visit it from the inside out, something that adds infinite richness to my enjoyment of the music both on the stand and via a CD player, and I'm so incredibly thrilled to have the opportunity to do that with this piece.

My back was murderously painful, though. Stacking wooden chairs that slant backwards are not optimal for a cello payer to begin with, but my lower back was moderately screwed up thanks to two train rides and a week of sleeping in a bed not my own. I stretched it out as best I could at the break, and ended up on the floor to try to give it some relief. It had gotten steadily worse after I got home; I finally asked HRH to massage it and get rid of the walnut-sized knot on the left side, and that plus some tiger balm seems to have helped a lot. I really, really need to get one of those firm orthopaedic wedge cushions that a couple of the other cellists in the section use.

* The original post at Owls' Court
* Owls' Court: the main journal

On The Other Hand...

The Beethoven symphony, the Vivaldi, and Scheherazade are going to sound great. The concertmaster's rendition of the Scheherazade/storyteller theme is magical.

And the conductor has said that she will make a final decision on concert tempo for the Hebrides next week. So there is hope!

~
* The original post at Owls' Court
* Owls' Court: the main journal
~

In Which She Grumbles About Cello

Here's the thing.

I have lost pretty much any joy in playing and practising, because it's all about L'Arlesienne and the Hebrides, and I hate them. I am better than I was when we started working on these, yes. But no matter how much I drill them, I'm getting them wrong, and there is no sense of satisfaction or progress. In fact, all there is is frustration. If I can play them at ridiculously slow speeds, that doesn't help me in top-speed concert situations.

We had a strings-only rehearsal on Saturday, and the Vivaldi was great. The four young soloists are terrific. But then we finished by playing the Hebrides at concert speed, and it's a train wreck. I suspect that this guest conductor has set us more than we can carry off, which she couldn't really know when she decided on the programme. And I hate saying that because I don't like to suggest that a concert is going to be less than good. But when the entire section of celli shakes its head at a piece, and there's someone saying she's not going to play in the concert because she doesn't like how the music is sounding, it's not an ideal situation. There's doing my best and being proud of it, and then there's the sense of hopelessness and resentment. (Mendelssohn, I hope you're happy, you section-wrecker, you.) And it's not just our section with the Mendelssohn problem, either.

So every time I sit down to play I want to play anything except Mendelssohn and Bizet, and I know that I need to practise them more than anything else. And I get cranky. I know that I am light-years beyond where I was seven years ago when I played L'Arlesienne the first time. It doesn't make a difference. What does make a difference is that fact that I've improved in general, so now the bits I get wrong sound really awful instead of blending into the general not-very-goodness of my playing.

This 7/8 sounds slightly choked in fourth position and above. I suspect it has something to do with me getting used to the touch up there and figuring out the proper angle of string-stopping. Still, I find myself thinking of how clearly my 4/4 sang in fourth and up. I plan to take the 4/4 out of its case next week and try to play all this stuff I've been working on on it, just to see if the 7/8 is making a difference. My first two months of rental are up at the beginning of April. I do like the sound of the 7/8, and it handles nicely in respect to size and proportion. I just have no clue if it's made a positive difference or not.

So yeah. I'm kind of looking forward to the post-concert break, and to different music.

~
* The original post at Owls' Court
* Owls' Court: the main journal
~