Piano Lesson

This was my first of two private lessons, since S- is out of town. Funny, I don’t think I played much better today, but I felt less badly about it, since I didn’t feel as though I was holding S- back. And a couple of things went very well.

• Scale: D Maj, 2 octave. I’ve been practicing it without looking, but you couldn’t tell when I played it. Took about six tries, but I did eventually succeed. It’s been interesting, learning what the scale feels like.
  Chords: D – G – D – A -D, LH in three inversions. We discussed the alternate fingerings, since they are different for LH than for RH. Lets see if I can remember:
  D 5-3-1 G64 5-2-1 A6 5-3-1 (all standard)
  D6 5-3-1 G 4-2-1 A64 5-2-1
  D64 5-2-1 G6 5-3-1 A 5-3-1 (all standard?)
  I need to double check those at the piano.
• Mach p460 Camptown Races in D – again in all inversions, especially starting on 2nd. Block chords.
• Mach p462 Streets of Loredo in G – practice accompaniment in arpeggiated chords, and any other variations I want to try.
• Mach p463 Jacob’s Ladder (new) – more practice in D (all inversions) with one new chord: D aug (D-F#-A#)
• Mach p297 Distant Horns – with pedal. Even with direct pedaling, the pedal goes down slightly after the finger plays the note, not exactly simultaneously. Watch the rhythm in m5 (I played it wrong all week!). Unpedaled notes in m14-15 must be legato, especially moving to last chord. Hands up on 3 at the end.
• Mach p298 He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands (new) – ostinato accompaniment in LH, downward walking baseline. Syncopation in RH. Phrasing. No pedal.
• Indigo – went really well. G- liked most of my performance decisions. This week, practice with metronome at a variety of tempos for discipline, even though it will be performed with plenty of rubato.
• Clementi - didn’t go so well, but still better. Nothing specific, just more repetitions, both playing troublespots and playing through with metronome.

That’s really quite a lot. I think we have two more lessons, the last one with S-. I’m looking forward to summer.

Cello Lesson

I’ve been putting off writing these notes (and last week’s are ‘way overdue), but I really don’t have much to report. It was one of those very simple, and very profound, lessons. We spent most of the time just talking, and when we finally got down to work, I suggested we take a look at the current state of my thumb position.

Material: 1 octave D major scale in basic thumb position, thumb across the midstring harmonics on A and D. We repeated it a number of times with the primary goal being the achievement of a beautiful sound. Right bow speed, right pressure, right distance from the bridge (very close). And in the left hand we experimented with how much pressure I need to get a clear sound by pressing very tightly while bowing, gradually letting the pressure up until the sound broke. Turns out I really don’t need to mash the string all the way to the fingerboard.

So that’s my thumb position assignment: above all else, the sound must be as beautiful in thumb position as it is lower on the neck. Choice of repertoire up to me.

Piano Lesson

A few minutes late again, and not enough practice, again.

• Scale and chords in D. This is like starting over again. Everything was going great when the chords were in the RH. Now they’re not. Grrr. More practice needed.
• Mach p460 Campdown Races in D, all chord positions. We only did root and 1st inversion. That was pretty bad, so G- didn’t push the issue. More practice needed.
• Mach p462 Streets of Laredo in G (new). Lots of movement between chords, with the addition of Am and D7 in a couple of inversions. This one is to be played with block chords as annotated. Practice in chunks.
• Mach p296 The Highlands. Went well. Done.
• Mach p297 Distant Horns (new). With pedal. RH is stationary while LH crosses over it.
• Indigo – S- played the A section, and I played the B, and crashed and burned. I was so, so, so unprepared to play the B section, especially unfortunate because I can play A pretty well. Sigh. More practice needed.
• Clementi. Reprieve – we didn’t get to it. Whew. More practice needed.

Orchestra Rehearsal

I think we’ve received all of the music planned for our next concert on May 16th, plus the prelude of the medical school graduation on May 2nd.

• Dvorak Slavonik Dance #1 (Op. 46) Presto
• Berlioz Roman Carnival Overture
• Selections from Les Miserables
• Medley from Camelot
• Mozart Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
• Bartok Rumanian Folk Dances
• Bach Double in c for violin and oboe
• Vivaldi Spring from The Four Seasons

Tonight we rehearsed the first five on the list, and my practice notes follow.

Dvorak

• Arpeggios
• scales at F
• broken thirds after F *** (impossible?)

Berlioz

• cello soli at 4
• syncopated motif as at 7 and 12, especially the end of it
• divisi part at 11
• arpeggio at 14
• new fingering at 6/8 after 14
• cello soli at 17 *** Deceptively difficult because of the G#. Fix the fingering.
• review fingering at 19

Les Mis

• run the whole thing once for fingering

Camelot

• once for fingering
• melody at 29 nice and legato

Mozart

• modulating section before D

Flute Trio

The past two rehearsals have been spent reading through volumes 1 and 5 of the Music For Three arrangements, with the goal of choosing an hour’s worth of programming for our upcoming nursing home gig. I think today we settled on:

• Haydn flute trio in D (3 movements)
• Three pieces by Fritz Kreisler: Liebesfreud, Liebeslied, and Schoen Rosmarin
• Three Stephen Foster songs arranged by our pianist: Beautiful Dreamer, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, and Oh Susannah
• Three dances by Lully: Air Tendre, Courante, and Sarabande

I think they will provide a nice atmosphere for Tea, and are a manageable amount of work. All good!

Piano Lesson

I arrived almost 15 minutes late for my lesson today. Bad me. Late is something I try never, ever, to be, so I wonder if this is more than just a miscalculation in timing. I have been feeling lately like I am wasting my time, and more importantly, the time of my fellow student and teacher. More than academic input right now I need practice time.

So I missed the time focused on I-IV-I-V-I chords in various inversions, based on B major. That’s fair, because it’s the one exercise I am more facile with than is S-, so she got a little extra time without me. And I am happy to report that we did not do Clementi today, so I wasn’t totally out of it after having missed last week’s lesson and not practiced since I got back in town. Bad me.

I don’t know yet what I am going to do about my current lack of interest in practicing the piano, but I did let S- know that I was planning to take a break over the summer. This is what I’m supposed to be practicing this week:

• Mach p460 Camptown Races, melody in D with chord symbols. Play A, not A7 as marked. Practice using root, 1st and 2nd inversion I chords. More importantly, practice the chord progressions we have been learning in the RH with the LH. Once the block chords are down, try it with various broken chord patterns.
• Mach p296. The Highlands, with damper pedal. We peeked inside the piano to see that the damper pedal lifts the dampers away from all the keys, while pressing a single key without pedal lifts only the damper on those strings. Lifting the dampers allows the overtones to echo more freely. We are starting with direct pedaling, where the damper pedal goes down at the beginning of the chord, and releases at the end of the chord, so that hands and foot are moving simultaneously.
• Indigo, by Roger Grove. I can sight read the A section, but need to learn the B section. Add pedal to this, as well. We reviewed some suggestions, but have permission to experiment.
• Clementi. Not discussed, but I need to keep working on the 1st and 2nd movements.

As we left, S- gave me copies of a printout of a web site about La Folia. She had mention two weeks ago that she had heard this in performance, and was enthralled. I’m with her there – it’s always been a favorite of mine, in all it’s variations, but especially violin played with basso continuo. She and G- played with it a bit at the lesson I missed. It’s not an assignment, but who knows. Maybe I’m more likely to spend time on it because I like it and know I don’t have to!

Cello Lesson

First lesson in three weeks, so of course I felt less than well prepared. We started off with a scale, but today I began with F for linked half notes, then T- asked for d in quarter notes, and finally Bb in eighth notes. I found that I needed more time to get oriented to the fingerboard than I had available with the faster notes. That is, with linked half notes, which are really whole note duration on each note, I have enough time to think of the next note coming so I don’t notice how much I need that time. I should surprise myself occasionally by jumping into a scale with a faster tempo to get a better handle on how well I really know it.

The other major comment was about how my sound when I am playing a whole note and thinking about it is so much better than when I play four quarter notes on a bow. They optimally should be the same, since I am using the same bow speed. T- suggested that that be a specific goal in my practice, and that when my ear tells me it’s not so I should pause to play a few whole notes to recalibrate and then continue.

He also had me try a kinesthetic exercise to help with that. I began by using my right elbow to “write” with, as though it was a big, fat magic marker. Gradually, I lowered my arm into playing position, then drew the bow while still imagining that I was writing with my elbow. It reminded me a lot of some Alexander Technique work I have done, thinking of leading with the elbow when moving my arm away from the body. T- also reminded me to think of my elbow diving back toward my body on each up bow. This improves the weightiness of the arm, while keeping the elbow pointed away effectively lifts the bow up out of the string. Effective, but undesired.

Next was Bach 2nd Suite, Minuet II. The only real technical difficulty I had was in the A section, shift from F on IV to D on II, then descending scale down the D string. Rather than awaiting instruction I started practicing that in a structured way, and I think T- was pleased. It really helped to clarify the positions – 3d position shifting to 5th – and I knew my hand pattern on arrival, whole half. Thinking about the positions contributes to my moving the whole arm, rather than reaching with the fingers to hit a particular note. Then the following notes are also more likely to be in tune.

That took hardly any time at all, so I also played the Gigue. There were just a few technical instructions.

• Play the droning quarter note D’s vigorously. Voicing the upper notes is not the point here.
• Since I am playing those eighth notes two to a bow, play them strong-weak rather than equivalently.
• The non-held note in a double stop should often be played as only an eighth note to facilitate fingering. There is one bar in each section in which that trick helped immensely. We spent a few minutes looking at the performance suggestions in the Alexanian edition, which were very useful in that regard.
• Make a big deal about the final arpeggio the second time through – after all, that’s the end of the whole suite.

Otherwise, all the coaching was to just play. T- really did seem to be happy when I went for it in spite of a few wrong notes, though that also meant that in general I was getting them pretty well. We did a bit of grinning (effective at keeping tension out of my face) and also focusing on what my right hand was doing. I didn’t think I was prepared enough to stop supervising my left hand, but was again surprised when the music improved as I shifted focus. I need to do that more often when I practice.

It was remarkable that we covered so much in one lesson, and quite unusual. More typically we do one or two phrases, not one or two movements. I’m pleased that I was able to figure out so much on my own during my preparatory practice, a real sign of growth while studying this suite over the last year and a half.

For next week? No specific assignment. We haven’t worked on the Allemande in a lesson yet, so I think I’ll switch my focus there while reviewing the other movements. That will be the last dance.

Orchestra Rehearsal

An unusual rehearsal tonight. It was a Strings Only rehearsal, and our principal cellist was unable to be there. We had one other absence, which left the cello section at half strength, and me in the first seat. Too bad for them. We played Bach and Vivaldi, and had an altogether delightful baroque time of it.

First up was the Bach Double. I have previously mentioned it as the Bach Conterto for Two Cembalos in c minor. Turns out the Bach Double is variously arranged for two violins, two harpsichords, or the way we are playing it, violin and oboe. The continuo part is a little tricky, with three flats and lots of accidentals, as you would expect in c minor. It was great fun, though, and a tiny bit of work will make it more so.

We’re playing Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons this go ’round, with Bridget soloing again. Since we’ve played this before, it was just brushing up and adding a few more details, PLUS I got to play to solos in the continuo part. Have I mentioned before that I do not like E major? Enough said.

I wish we played music like this more often. What fun.