Concert review, Recital Snafu

Last night's concert was outstanding, top-notch, glorious to behold. It will be easy to write this review. And it was followed by a gala party, complete with food, wine and a jazz band, at a recently restored mansion, now arts center, to celebrate the conductor's birthday.

Did you know that the entire second movement of Haydn's 13th Symphony in D major is a cello solo? I didn't. An unexpected cello adagio cantabile. What a treat!

Today's cello choir recital was fine, all things considered. We met early to rehearse our two pieces. The first time through our more difficult piece, I thought went very well, but some of the others weren't happy and wanted to try it again. The second time, I got confused. In the performance, several people got confused, and we had to actually stop and start over. Between the three times, though, it was good enough. :-)

Cello Choir, Tuesday

Cello choir was warm and delightful last night, kind of like a good family holiday gathering. There are five of us, all women of a certain age, plus our [woman] teacher. Each has been playing for about 5-8 years. All love the cello, love playing together, and enjoy each other's company. We also play reasonably well together, having been playing together 3-5 years.

Carol, a talented artist, craftsperson, and cellist, brought hand-crocheted "scrubbies" for all, to be used to clean cello strings. She had also created a beautiful collage of photographs of a recent recital, for the teacher. The teacher gave us all cello mutes for a piece we are playing (Farewell to Nova Scotia). I grabbed some String Magazine reprints of articles on adult amateur string players from the lobby of the Conservatory and distributed those. (Several articles: how to find a teacher, ensemble class, playing in a community orchestra, and building self-confidence, all from the May 2007 issue of Strings Magazine. Strings has an online forum, and one of the articles encourages readers to share their experiences as adult beginners at the online String Talk forum. I had a little trouble registering--no place to indicate a password. Later, though, I got a password via e-mail. I haven't had time to check back to see if there has been any activity on this topic.)

Then, we got some new music, mostly very playable, with some challenging spots for interest: Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by Bach, and La Diva deL'empire March by Satie. Both fun to play.

Cello choir, flute choir

Cello choir went well tonight. I had no trouble with that tricky part that gave me such trouble last week. There is much to be said for careful practice.

We canceled flute choir practice tomorrow because of Valentine's Day (and because a big snowstorm is predicted). I play both flute and cello in the flute choir, sometimes transposing the bass flute part for cello, sometimes using music with a written cello part. We are a small flute choir, currently only five members. We have an alto flute player, but no bass flute.

We have decided to do a St. Patrick's Day concert at the nursing home: cheerful Irish music, with potential for sing-alongs. One of our members will tell a few jokes, in his droll manner. We will bring refreshments. We're trying to make it entertaining and to encourage participation.

“But I played it perfectly at home!”

In cello choir class the other night, after we both bumbled through a tricky passage, the woman who was playing first with me turned to me and said: “I practiced this part! I played it perfectly at home! I really worked on it.” I stopped her by saying, “I did too, and I marked all the fingering, but now when I look at those numbers they mean nothing to me.” She, too, had worked out the fingering. Then I admitted I only worked on it in one or two practice session, over the last two weeks—and so did she. We both finally did get it right, but it was a struggle.

This is something one should learn early on in practicing, that, to “set” a passage, you have to slow it down and play it over and over again, even after you get it right. The brain remembers all those times you flubbed it. Another woman had trouble because she kept slowing down when she got to her tricky passage. This is another reason to play the whole piece slowly in practice, rather than to try to play it up to speed immediately. I’m working on this!

The cello choir is one of several adult cello choirs at the local conservatory. The more advanced choir has eight players; ours, an intermediate level group, has five. There are one or two less advanced groups with 3 to 5 players. There is also a string orchestra (which I joined for a time) and a community orchestra, both of which have numerous cellists.

It is amazing to me that in this small area there are so many adult cellists, all of whom absolutely love the cello. I think it is largely due to the cello choir teacher, the teacher of most of the other cello choir students, who welcomes adult students with endless patience and gentle support. My own teacher has group classes only rarely, and far fewer adult students, so the cello choir classes are a great way for me to play with other cellists.

This week, however, we were teacherless, as our teacher had another commitment. We did just fine on our own—there is much we students can learn from each other and from being left on our own to figure things out for ourselves every now and then.