Category Archives: Wye the flute?

Day 107 – January 15th – Back to Class

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Though we started a little later than usual, it was back to class today now that Trevor’s on the mend. Having had the extra few days to practise, I was quite confident that I could present something a bit more polished than usual. I’d also taken some more time to focus on my recurring weak spots – dynamics and sloppy dotted rhythms in particular. Overall, my playing was quite good, dare I say a step up from previous weeks. In a nutshell, the feedback was:

Moyse 25, no. 4 – Good expression, good dynamics, but accompanying line wasn’t always even when oscillating between C and D.

Moyse 25, no. 5 – I’d tried to learn the notes to play quickly, rather than thinking about “following each note with the lips”. Back on the menu for next week, along with its partner study no.9.

Moyse 25, no. 6 and 7 – In character and expressive, though a little on the slow side. When I get faster, I need to remember to accent the first part of the beat rather than the triplet in no. 6.

Andersen no. 11 – A few wrong notes here and there, but expressive and even. A little more diminuendo on the last semiquaver of each beat would be good, but at least I wasn’t cutting them!

Altès no. 16 – Expressive, with a particularly good cadenza. I need to watch my trills, which were too fast for the character of the piece, and make sure that my crotchets in the opening melody “disappear into the silence” like a lifted violin note.

Altès no. 17 – Fine, though could have been faster (yes, I know I need to learn to tongue faster – doesn’t everyone?!)

Moyse 50 Variations – Having spent a lot of time on these this week, Trevor seemed much happier about how I was getting along with them. After a few outings, no. 5 was finally passed (jump for joy!), and nos. 9 and 11 were “perfect”. No. 10 was a little harder, and it took a few goes for me to make the difference between the melody line and accompanying parts big enough. I need to keep remembering that for everyone else to hear a big dynamic contrast I have to be making a really huge, supernatural-feeling difference between the loudest and softest notes. Finally, no. 12 was “a bit unstable” and is back on for next week.

I was rather hoping for a bit of chamber music this evening but nobody else seemed terribly interested, so I’ve spent the time working on my new website. Though it’s nowhere near complete, it might be worth taking a look!

Day 106 – January 14th – The Theory of Everything

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Had a lovely time this evening going to see The Theory of Everything with Sue from Hastingleigh – what a wonderful and though-provoking film! As a bonus, the sun was out in the afternoon, I was able to walk over the Sue and Paul’s, and Paul had made spicy lentil and coconut soup for supper before we headed off. As always, it was lovely to spend time with the Boxalls, especially since things have been so quiet here the last few days.

Tomorrow we’re back into the swing of things with lessons, and I hope that my efforts to prepare a little more over the extra days will be balanced by my having prepared well. I’ve been listening back to some older recordings lately – particularly of my first MMus recital in December 2013 – and can now hear a whole lot of things in my playing that I couldn’t hear before. Things like clipped endings of phrases and slightly incorrect rhythms. Hopefully this means that I’ve corrected the problems in my playing now, or at least am on the way to doing it!

Trevor threw us something of a curved ball today, emailing to let us know that we have a class with Juliet Edwards next Friday. All of a sudden another thing to prepare for, and at rather short notice! I feel like this is part of the plan, and then email also came with repertoire suggestions for each of us. Mine were either the Andante Pastoral et Scherzetto by Taffanel or a movement of the Widor Suite. I really like both pieces, and am rather tempted by the challenge of preparing the Taffanel despite there being relatively more notes. We’ll see what Trevor says about it all tomorrow.

As for my reply email to Trevor, I was feeling a little creative, and since he’s had laryngitis I thought a poetic get well soon message was in order:

Mr Wye had an affliction of the throat,
Which made him sound quite a bit like a goat,
He coughed and he spluttered,
Yet “lovely day” he still uttered,
In the jovial emails he wrote!

Day 105 – January 13th – Even more time!

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Though Trevor was kind enough to take us to Tesco this afternoon, he still sounded very croaky and class has been postponed until at least Thursday. Shopping was a good reason to get out of the house, and I’m also glad that we’ve now replenished the stock of fruit and veggies – we’d got to the point of the fridge being rather bare!

On one hand, a break from the relentlessness of classes has been good, and allowed me to spend a little more time on technique without worrying about all the studies to prepare. On the other hand, it means that I’ve ended up working myself really hard now for five days straight, and am rather in need of a bit of down time that doesn’t involve flute playing! On the days that we have class, there’s a bit of a mutual agreement that we don’t practice, and often there’s a bit of a group dinner. I’m not sure what’s happened in the last few days – maybe everyone’s got a bit of the January blues – but nobody was keen to play chamber music yesterday evening and everyone has kept to themselves all of the time. It felt like our little outing today was the first conversation I’d had in a while, and even that was rather subdued!

Looking on the bright side, I have the perfect remedy lined up for tomorrow evening when I’m off to see The Theory of Everything with wonderful Sue from Hastingleigh. I’ll certainly be packing tissues, and am looking forward to it immensely. Beyond that, I need to remember that reading, knitting and even watching TV are perfectly acceptable ways to spend the evening when my lips and/or brain gives out!

I returned to the Eb scales and thirds today, and am pleased to say that they’re maybe 5% better than yesterday. A small improvement, but hopefully if I keep chipping away at it they’ll be flying along in a week or so. The Taffanel and Gaubert-style regular scales certainly are, though majors are still a bit faster than the minors. Another exercise that I’ve been practising a bit lately is the Perpetuum Mobile studies at the back of Trevor’s Complete Daily Exercises book. He’s taken a devilish little orchestral solo from Strauss’s work by the same name and written four studies which transpose the pattern of the excerpt through all the keys. Apparently one year he had two students who memorised the whole thing in a week and played it flawlessly at a really fast speed! I’m not up to that yet, but have been slowly edging the metronome up and the fluency is slowly increasing.

Though our piccolo masterclass with Patricia Morris was cancelled on Sunday, Trevor’s hopeful that it’ll happen in the next week or so. He asked us to prepare a few studies and some excerpts but left it open as to how much we work on – I’m assuming because there will be vary levels of competency with the piccolo in the class group. For studies, I’ve chosen no. 8 from Moyse’s 24 Melodic Studies as it has quite a broad range and requires seamless movement between the registers. I’ve been working on a few studies from Patricia Morris’s Piccolo Study Book, and will certainly be ready to play no. 3 (Furstenau) but am not so sure whether no. 7 will be ready by the time she comes.

In terms of excerpts, I’ve set myself a bit of a challenge. Though my excerpts in regular class are far from perfect, they’re usually quite good, and I seem to have a pretty decent knowledge of the orchestral repertoire. So rather than preparing one or two excerpts, I though I’d have a crack at the audition list for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Piccolo job which was up for audition in December. There were eleven excerpts on piccolo, to which I’ve added the Ravel Ma mère l’oye piccolo excerpts (there were also flute ones listed). Looking down the list, I was pleasantly surprised that I knew most of then, and had played all but two before in various contexts. A couple of them – the dreaded Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 for example – will need a lot of work to get them up to speed, while others seemed to fall back under the fingers very naturally. Perhaps an ambitious goal considering everything else that I need to work on, but it feels like a good one and for the moment I’m quite enjoying it.

Right now, though, it’s time for a cup of chamomile tea, a book and bed!

Day 104 – January 12th – E flat

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Today has been rather quiet, both because of our lack of class and because it’s utterly horrible outside. This morning I had grand plans of going for a run, but that was soon halted when I saw just how wet and windy it was outside. Instead, the large knitted jumper from grandma has come out, and I’ve spent the day practising, getting odd jobs done and drinking lots of tea. Last night, I finished one of my hand-warmers (or are they fingerless gloves?), which I’m very pleased with. The pattern I’m using is here. If this weather keeps up, the other one will be done before too long as well.

My first hand-warmer!

My first hand-warmer!

All the technical work that we’re doing makes me play round the circle of fifths multiple times a day, and as always there are some keys that sit better than others. When it comes to my least favourite keys, though, I’ve rather surprised myself if recent months. As a teenager and undergrad student, I always feared C#/Db and F#/Gb majors and Bb and D#/Eb minors because there were scary numbers of flats and sharps not matter how I thought about it. Maybe that ultimately made me practise them with more vigour. Now that I’m here at the flute studio, the keys that I’m most inclined to slip up on are Eb major, Eb minor and G#/Ab minor. I think one of the main things about Eb is that we’re not allowed to use thumb Bb for technical work, and so all of a sudden the fifth of the key is a awkward fingering. Reichert no. 2 becomes particularly treacherous because the fifth is in both the arpeggio and the dominant 7th.

Other exercises where I’ve noticed this are the Boehm study and Trevor’s scales in thirds. With the thirds, we start in C and play the scales in C major, harmonic minor, melodic minor and whole tones. Then we play the major, minor, second inversion minor (so F minor for C major) and diminished seventh of the next key (C#) all in broken thirds. The whole exercise then moves up a step to C# major and so on. In class we tend not to get too much further than D, as Trevor decides it’s time to move onto something else, but I’ve one of my goals to play through the whole thing. That was, until I got to Eb. The major is ok, but the minors are utterly awful! At this level, the aim is to erase weaknesses in tricky keys, and I’m of course going to persevere, but it could take a while to get past the Eb minor block.

In some ways, today was an Eb minor sort of day; dark and ominous. In the major, I quite like the richness of this key, and the minor can also be rich and velvety. It might be even more so if I could overcome my battle with it!

Day 103 – January 11th – Some more time

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Last night my bed fell apart! The slating underneath came away in one corner so that my mattress wasn’t supported, which was something of a shock. I moved the mattress onto the floor for the night, but was rather nervous as to what my landlords would say when I reported it to them this morning. Luckily Carol and Andy were rather unsurprised – apparently when families rent the dairy in the summer children bounce a bit on the rather badly-made beds and it happens all the time. Rather a relief, and thanks to Andy I now have a perfectly solid bed to sleep on again tonight.

Trevor emailed us this afternoon to say that he has laryngitis and that class is postponed until either Tuesday or Wednesday. While I’m sorry he’s not well, a little part of me also jumped for joy at the thought of a few more days to work on my studies! Andersen no. 11 is proving to be a bit of a tricky one with lots of sneaky accidentals. While it needs to be beautifully phrased and take into account the numerous appoggiaturas, it is also really fast at crotchet = 116. I’m aiming for phrasing, expression and not cutting note endings above speed, though both would be ideal. Trevor really does love these studies, and I can see why – they are so musical and nuanced yet really demand good technique.

Something that I forgot to write about a few days ago is a book that I’ve finished reading – Cadence by Emma Ayres. I listened to her present the breakfast show on ABC Classic FM as a teenager, and she taught cello at my secondary school. The book, however, tells the story of both her studies on the viola and a cycle ride that she did from England to Hong Kong before she came to Australia. It’s a beautiful memoir, challenge and self-reflection laced with incredibly powerful descriptions of music. I found the read immersive (I read about 150 pages on the trip down from Grimsby) and inspiring, both from a musical and literary point of view. Wonderful stuff.