Day 122 – January 30th – Snow and Frustration

Snowy downs

Snowy downs

This morning I woke to the first proper snowfall; white fields and hedgerows. Despite the cold, I thoroughly enjoyed the walk to class and could almost have passed Trevor’s house by and carried on!

I rather surprised myself in the warm-up by getting through almost all of the proposed exercises from memory without slips. Of particular note, I was asked to play ‘solo’ scales round the circle of fifths (C major, A melodic minor, F major etc.) with Trevor beating a rather brisk time all the way. Only two slips, and interestingly neither of them in tricky keys! I also managed the arpeggios on page 96 of Complete Daily Exercises all the way up to Ab without any significant slips, and it was playing them once through as well.

Snowy downs

Snowy downs

However, my performance in the masterclass proper didn’t go brilliantly. I started the Taffanel Andante Pastoral too slowly, and despite feeling like I’d put a lot of work into the character of the piece, was told that I was playing in quite an insular, nervous way. By the time we got to the Scherzettino, I just wanted to sit down, and dropped quite a lot of notes. Apparently that was better, though, because I was feeling the rhythm more! I recorded the class, and so need to sit down in a couple of days time and process all the information again.

There was a general sigh of relief this evening, as we’ve made it to the end of a very hectic two weeks. Though there are studies anew to prepare for Monday, we had a bit of a night off, watched some truly awful American TV and played the board game Frustration!

Day 120 – January 28th – Notes

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 115 – January 23rd – Learning it quickly

One of the big things I’m learning as part of this course is how to prepare a lot of music very quickly. Last weekend up in London I was telling a friend about all the studies we have to play each week, and then added that Thursday is repertoire and excerpts. She almost fell off her a chair!

While it’s not normally comfortable preparing this much music each week, I’m definitely getting much better at it. This week, however, is another step up again. Not only is Trevor applying pressure to me in particular with studies, we have the Fauré Fantasie on Thursday and then different repertoire for the masterclass on Friday. I’ve played the Fauré before, and so my main worry this morning was the Taffanel for Friday – the Scherzettino in particular needs to be fast and fluid despite some tricky finger passages.

This afternoon, though, I spent 45min working quite solidly on the Taffanel and already feel a lot better about it. I think that I’ve learned to isolate the passages that really need work, and also the type of work that’s needed, rather than assuming I need to spend hours on every last corner of a piece. In the Scherzettino, I need to spend more time on articulation in the theme, as well as some fingering bits at the end. The Andante Pastoral isn’t as hard as it looks – there are a couple of demi-semiquaver flourishes at the end that need a bit more time, but otherwise it’s basically counting and making sure that my ornaments in the poco piu mosso stay in time.

The other big factor in learning all the music quickly is definitely all the scales and finger exercises – my fingers fall into the patterns so much more easily now! The studies, though, are another story. They’re meant to be hard, to challenge both our technique and our musicality. Looks like they’re what I’ll be working on after piccolo class tomorrow!