Monthly Archives: July 2006

I went to the Barbican tonight for Classical Concertos, which included Wolf’s Italian Serenade, Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 (which my mother, and my friend Jennifer ‘s mother, who very kindly invited me along with, loved), Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major and Mozart’s Symphony No 25 (that one in G Minor).

Natalie Clein was the soloist for the Haydn. Everyone made such a big kafuffle over her, I expected to be amazed. I just wasn’t. Reviews I’ve read of her say she ‘gets out of the way of the music’. I think it was quite the opposite. You expect soloists to do a certain amount of flopping about and silly head movements, etc, but she was distracting, and really just over dramatic. I felt like she wasn’t technically as accurate as she should be for all the playing up to it. I just wasn’t very impressed – she sounded tired, slightly bored and not at all present.

The orchestra, the Academy of St Martin’s in the Fields, however, was incredible. They were truly faultless and engaged. I had never heard any Hugo Wolf, and I’m not a huge Lieder fan, but that serenade was such a beautiful piece of music. Unfortunately it sounds like he was a Lieder fanatic and didn’t really write any other instrumental pieces.

I had a bit of a breakthrough on my bowing last night.

I’ve been having trouble finding the right hold on my bow – it’s a learned position, so it’s hardly going to be comfortable, or even feel normal, at first. I’m no stranger to odd hand positions, look at a flautist’s left hand when they play, it looks downright painful.

My cello teacher, as wonderful as he is, was having trouble getting this one across to me. We all have blind spots when we teach music – I probably couldn’t explain how to do vibrato on a wind instrument if my life depended on it. One day I just started doing it and my teacher at the time probably let out a huge sigh of relief at not having to go through that one.

It seems that the less natural aptitude you have, the better teacher you are. I had to learn everything, absolutely everything, about breathing and tonguing on flute – nothing came easily at all. When I came to teaching beginners though, I was quite good at it. My huge First Night classes in the grade schools (where you pick up your first band instrument with your parents, and learn how to put it together, etc etc) would have every little one making a noise. At my own First Night when I was small, maybe two kids out of thirty managed it.

Last night I was so frustrated and I could feel the way I was holding the bow was holding me back. I went to YouTube and searched cello playing, thinking if I could watch some people playing it would help. Among the clips of six year olds scraping away and strange arrangements of popular music involving 37 different tracks of cello noises, I found a few clips of actual performances. And then I could see what I needed to do.

Of course – can I explain it either? Probably not. But I’ll give it a shot. I had my right wrist jutting forward, and it wasn’t letting me extend far enough on my downbows. I lengthened my forearm, and tried to think about elongating, like you do in yoga, without actually moving so much as thinking your body into the position. My wrist magically loosened up and came down. I played a few pieces and slipped around a bit more, but that will come as I train myself to hold my bow consistently like this. But it was suddenly much easier! My tone was instantly better and it felt much less like I was fighting through everything.

Christopher yelled from the other room that it sounded better, so that’s always the final test isn’t it?

My lesson on Saturday went well, but it was one of those sessions where
you’ve progressed in technique and learned something new but it’s going
to cause some pain and mental agility while you figure it out in your
everyday playing.

My goal in the next month before my next lesson is to play every day
- even if it’s just for a short period of time. Even 20 minutes. I
ordered some books of studies to give myself work to do – if you
haven’t had the joy of studies or etudes, it’s basically pieces of
music written to get you to practise a certain aspect of playing,
invariably something difficult and kind of irritating. When I was
studying flute, they were things like an entire page of making you do
awkward octave jumps, or quick passages making you exercise your third
and little finger more than you ever thought possible. They’re written
with melody and some interest in it, so I find it easier than just
running scales endlessly.

It does give you an incredible sense of satisfaction when you’ve
nailed one though. Overly-technical passages give me the
heebie-jeebies, so it helped me get over my fear of that kind of thing.

I’ve banned myself from playing flute until I get better at reading
bass clef. Going back to treble clef will just undo all my hard work up
to now. It’s like learning a new language – I’m almost at the point
where I’m not translating back and forth all the time.

It’s funny to find communities that just haven’t embraced the
innerweb much. Searching for reviews of hard cello cases and where I
might buy one used was like being rocketed back to 1999 in terms of
horrible web pages using frames, bouncing GIFs and strange background
images making the text illegible. Try buying cello strings online, or
trying to find somewhere that just discusses playing the instrument -
it’s all outdated content, or the design and structure is so bad you
think it’s ten years old.

Having played music in the amateur end of that world for a long
time, I think it comes down to time and a lack of skills. Anyone making
their living playing traditional classical music is generally teaching
a boatload of private students, as well as playing in as many recording
and performing orchestras as physically possible, which also involves
touring sometimes. Using a computer or regularly checking email just
doesn’t factor into that kind of workday. Unless you’re exceptionally
interested on your own time, why would you ever get around to it?

This probably will be less the case as people younger than I am go
through school learning how to use the internet as a tool, whereas when
I was in university, Geocities was cool and a bit cutting edge.