Even though practising is not on the cards right now, I still think a lot about playing. I think about Bach, what it felt like playing some really spine-rattling bits in Mendelssohn 1 and I daydream about having effortless vibrato.
I’m also thinking about what my cello playing holds for me in the next few years. I love performance – I’m not one of those people who ‘play for themselves’ at home and feel no need to join a group, or have other people hear them. Obviously part of learning cello is for myself, god knows I wouldn’t spend that long on Sevcik for solitary joy of it, that’s for damn sure. But for me, watching the joy on friends’ and strangers’ faces as my orchestra soars through some phrase we drilled and drilled endlessly, standing up at the end feeling the warmth of applause – that is what it’s about.
Vancouver, where I’m moving to in approximately eight weeks (AAHHHHHH PANIC!), is not the hotbed of amateur music-making London is. I’ve tracked down two amateur orchestras, both with higher playing requirements than I can manage right now, both not particularly near anywhere we’ll be living. I only know woodwind and brass players from when I was in school, and have lost touch with pretty much all of them. I’m trying to keep my chin up, and not get stuck on the uphill climb that awaits me to get back to where I was, let alone where I’d like to be. And where will I be able to play? says the little scared let’s-not-move voice.
Realistically, when I’m not exhausted at the end of a trying day, I know I will find something. Chamber music may be the way forward for awhile, there is the incredible mine of cello information that is a Skype lesson with Emily Wright – it will be okay. I will get back there.
