Category Archives: Wye the flute?

Day 121 – January 29th – Nerves

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I didn’t have a great day today. Little by little, I feel like I’ve been becoming more nervous in classes, and this week it’s been particularly bad. It’s frustrating, because I know that I’m improving in the practice room and what I can do there, but can’t seem to reproduce that in front of the class.

Things started out quite well, and for the first time ever my starting tune was passed without criticism. But then Trevor went off on a tangent on intonation for a while, using me as the teaching demonstration. This unnerved me, and I ended up playing both my orchestral extract The Banks of the Green Willow and the Faure some way below par. In the Butterley, the nerves manifested themselves as shaky vibrato and wandering pitch, and in the Faure a lot of missed noted. I feel like I need to find some time to chat with Trevor about the nerves, because I don’t think they’re helping matters at all, and at the moment he’s making me feel like I can’t do anything right no matter how much I practice. However, he keeps cancelling our evening walks, and the opportune moment isn’t presenting itself.

Hopefully after tomorrow’s masterclass I can relax a bit more.

Day 120 – January 28th – Notes

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Not much to report today; I did a lot of practice for tomorrow and Friday, finished my Mozart cadenza and took myself off for a walk in the afternoon. Trevor still isn’t 100% over his cold, and so cancelled our walk this evening. I’m trying desperately to avoid unnecessary cabin fever, and so jumped when the rain cleared in the afternoon. I walked east, up and down the windy hills. It’s a walk I like – not many cars, and some lovely sweeping views over the fields. It was still blustery, and by the time I got back my face and hands were pink and chilled.

While the Faure Fantasie for tomorrow is sounding quite good, I still need to do a bit more work on the notes in the Taffanel Scherzettino for Friday. They’re almost there, and considering how little time I’ve had to learn the piece it’s coming along quite well. I just need to remember that it’s better to practice slowly and get the notes right rather than trying to play too fast!

After the work on my Mozart cadenza yesterday I wrote it up this afternoon. Trevor wants it written out with bars, and asked for ‘no less that eight’. I’ve ended up with thirteen (or sixteen if you count a starting section I’m not totally sure I like), and am hoping that it’s not going to be too long, or indeed too pretentious. At the moment I’m quite pleased with it, I think it’s a lot more mature than cadenzas I’ve written in the past, which have tended to err on the side of being rather safe. However, I’m very much prepared for it not being good enough for Trevor tomorrow. Hopefully my doubts are unfounded!

Day 119 – January 27th – Cadenza

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There’s a lot to prepare for class on Thursday and Friday. Our repertoire on Thursday is the Faure Fantasie, but Trevor has also requested a cadenza for the first movement of Mozart’s G major flute concerto. I haven’t written a cadenza in quite a while, and finally got round to it properly today. Trevor seemed quite open to different cadenza ideas, and said that we don’t ‘have to’ end with a trill or begin in a certain way. So, rather than trying to be academic and plan out a chord progression or anything, I decided it was better to just start improvising and see where I got to. After an hour of playing this and that, I have a new love for diminished chords, and what I think will be the middle and end of my cadenza for Thursday. I also have a lot of bits and pieces that could grow into other bits of other cadenzas further down the track.

One of the things the exercise has confirmed for me is the importance of having not just scales and arpeggios under my fingers but practising the sequences that link them. In my improvisation, I often just followed my fingers and the feel of which chord should come next, something that I certainly couldn’t have done four months ago. However, it also reminded me that the only way to really get better at writing cadenzas is to take the time to improvise more – one more thing to add to the daily practice list!

Day 118 – January 26th – Carving and chiseling

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I meant to make a little more time to write this evening, as there is a lot to write about, but have been doing some other work and all of a sudden it’s quite late!

After class this afternoon, we went down the road to visit Michael Rust, a wood and stone-carver based in Hastingleigh, Kent. Michael showed us round his studio, talked about his rather winding career path and showed us examples of his work. His lettering and carving work is stunning – everything from commemorative plaques to large wooden sculptures. The woodwork was particularly beautiful, and clearly his passion. I was amazed by how delicately lines and forms could be cut with a hammer and chisel. There was even some mulled wine and afternoon tea to finish off.

The visit reminded me just how versatile we need to be to work on any artistic discipline. Michael will turn his hand and chisel to a huge variety of projects, and in each of them seeks to push his creative skills and make something really wonderful. While I’m here to improve my flute playing, I need to remember that my skills in writing, radio, French and even organisation should never fall by the wayside.

And with that thought in mind, I promise a review of last night’s LSO concert tomorrow!