Category Archives: Mozart Sinfonia Concertante

I drilled the passages I've been struggling with in the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, and I'm feeling a bit more confident. String sectional this week is still putting a little bit of fear in my heart, but there you are.

No matter how many times I play this though, the Andante movement still gives me shivers… especially the last few bars where the violas have those gorgeous quavers on their own. Makes my knees weak just thinking of it. Listen to Maxim Vengerov and Yuri Bashmet play it.

When I'm working on a piece of orchestral music, I like to play along with recordings. It's not the only way I practise my part, but I try to make sure every second time I work on something, I play it in full with a recording in my practice session.

It helps me work on a few things, that aren't necessarily just the mechanics of the left hand:

• Trying to match other sections phrasing, in a way I wouldn't feel comfortable doing in rehearsal
• Learning to pace myself for the whole work
• Building stamina
• Taking the time to really listen how my part fits in to the whole

Obviously what my section leader and conductor says in rehearsal comes first in terms of interpretation, but often their advice is close to what I'm hearing on record anyway. More than once the experience of blundering around with my bits this way at home has made me faster at picking up what's being asked of me in rehearsal.

It's easy to skip over repeated sections when you're practising on your own, god knows we see enough repeated quavers marching on forever across the page in Mozart and Haydn. No one wants to spend an hour doing that. But of course if you're playing along with someone, you're going to end up playing them all. I found I was getting more and more tense through these passages and I managed to relax a bit. I would have noticed that practically the day before the concert if I only ever played it through in rehearsals.

I'm still building up stamina as a player, and you don't usually run the whole symphony (or whatever) in rehearsal. Even when I'm playing a lot in rehearsal, it's not as constant as running the whole work. Until I'm much more experienced, I need to run the whole thing at home regularly to learn how to hold something in reserve for a demanding presto or a long and sustained adagio movement.

Plus this means I can practise coming in, nice and loud and committed, without making a complete fool of myself when I get it two beats early. Well, it doesn't guarantee I won't do that again I suppose!

Oh, I do not like those rehearsals where you're sitting at the back panicking as you sight read the music on the stand, and then you hear: 'Cellos from the bar 8 please'.

Shit shit shit shit.

Now is the time when I want to be able to not care what the much better cellist in front of me thinks, what the lovely conductor thinks. Thankfully I know my stand partner well and he was struggling too, so I know he wasn't thinking anything but the aforementioned panicking mantra. This is Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante I'm obsessing about.

So – all the things I should be thinking right now instead wanting to have a little cry:
1. This is an amateur orchestra and I am paying to be there. This is not my job and no one can fire me.
2. Everyone was sight reading and everyone was struggling.
3. The proper hired cellist leading our section wasn't getting it spot on by a long shot and didn't do the same bowing twice, mouthing apologies to the rest of us the whole time, and said afterward that this was hard stuff.
4. Our conductor said a couple times that this was going to be really difficult to get right though it looked simple, and we had to work at it loads.

This is where I take myself firmly by the shoulders and say, 'you are a good little learning cellist who will figure this out, do not freak out, just have a good sit down with the part this weekend. And all next week.'

Because at the end of rehearsal those dreaded five words rung out over the church hall:

'Next week is string sectionals.'

!

Yes,  we start on Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante next Thursday night – I am so excited. Unfortunately we'll be doing both the Mozart and the Beethoven, which means I have to drag my flute, cello and music stand to rehearsal. Everyone loves me on the Bakerloo line in the morning when I do this, it's great.

But what's possibly more interesting than how much I piss off London tube commuters, is when I went to the loo at tea break last rehearsal there were two slugs doing, er, the nasty, albeit very slowly, on top of the toilet cistern. Yes really.

We'll see if they're still there next week

I start a new term of ELLSO this Saturday, and, more thrillingly to me anyway, I've joined a new orchestra on Thursday evenings. It's a new amateur orchestra in East London organised by the same people who ran that chamber music course I went to in the spring. This term we're playing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for viola and violin. I didn't know this piece before it turned up on the repertoire list, but I've since downloaded it and have fallen in love.

After downloading the score to have a quick look at the cello part, it looks damn well doable. I am so excited about this one. It's a beautiful piece of music – go listen to it if you haven't heard it yet.

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