Tag Archives: Tesco

Day 98 – January 6th – More fog

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Bit of a funny day today. I accidentally turned my alarm off this morning rather than hitting snooze, and so it was a bit of a scramble to be ready for Trevor’s Tesco pick-up at 8:42am (on the dot). Composer and repertoire listing was slow going as usual, but I’d learned quite a few more than I listed so am happy that I’m getting plenty out of the exercise.

My daily practice started out quite well, and while the three hours on technique weren’t amazing, they were also far from awful. However, the final two hours on studies and repertoire felt like wading through treacle. Despite having played Schubert’s Trockne Blumen Variations before, I could not get my fingers to move the way I wanted them to. I’m hoping that it was just a bit of an off day (to match the rather gloomy foggy weather) and that I’m not getting a cold or anything.

I’ve taken advantage of a walk-free evening to get a few other jobs done. Most importantly, one of the things I’m keen to do as part of my ArtStart grant from the Australia Council is attend the Bang on a Can summer festival in Boston, USA in July. I was on the reserve list last year, and am hoping that everything I’ve done since then will bump me up to being accepted. Who knows though, I just need to put together the best application I can!

I need to get motivated about running again, and am planning on heading out tomorrow morning even if it is a bit wet.

Day 76 – December 15th – Abnormal Mondays

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Instead of class today, we had another practice day, a trip to Tesco in the afternoon and then a chamber rehearsal in the evening. I’m rather glad of the extra day – I’m feeling about as confident as I’m going to with all my various studies for tomorrow, and looking forward to the concert.

Following my chat with Trevor on Friday, I’ve thrown myself into all the technical work with renewed determination, and was particularly happy with Reichert No. 2 this morning. Taffanel and Gaubert-style scales (from memory) are feeling good in major, but I still keep second guessing myself in the minor keys and then falling apart. I good proof of how much I’ve improved in the last ten weeks though was that I played the Pinkie Polka at crotchet = 80. I haven’t touched it for a couple of weeks now, but wanted to see where I was at, and rather surprised myself! The first metronome marking I’ve got down on the page is crotchet = 56, so it’s been quite a good step up.

Lesson: Remember the bigger picture as well as the day-to-day.

Our flute history paper is due tomorrow, and I’m rather glad – I need to stop proofreading it and move on to other things! At this rate I’ll probably launch straight from this one into the 1700-onward paper due in March!

Day 14 – October 14th – Variations

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After yesterday’s rather dismal outlook, I had a much more positive day today. A couple of the reasons were non-flute-related: I Skyped with some lovely friends in Australia this morning, the studio group had our weekly outing to Tesco, and I made a hot and yummy broccoli soup for dinner! All these things gave me the energy to do a fair slog of practice, and now my lips are a bit dead again.

Of particular note was that our repertoire for the week is Marin Marais’s Les Folies d’Espagne. I have a funny relationship with this piece. Despite being a bit of a new music fan in recent years, this is one of my all-time favourite flute pieces, or at least the E minor solo one is! I was a bit shocked to pick up the score for class and find that it was in G minor instead, but have actually found that my fingers got round the new key relatively easily (there are just a few mordants and trills that come a bit more easily in E min0r). There are also a couple of different variations between the E and G minor versions, which I’ve needed to have a think about.

In re-visiting the work, I’ve realised that I love it for precisely the reason that it’s so hard; a really wonderful performance holds my attention through all 31 variations, despite the fact that the harmony doesn’t change. I’ve got a wonderful recording of Jordi Savall and Baroque ensemble playing the whole set (exactly the one I’m now doing, interestingly enough), and the energy that they inject into the music is fantastic. Every variation makes me feel like dancing, yet in a different way each time. While they can achieve a lot more variety of timbre through the different instruments, my challenge is to play with the same energy and vitality across all the variations.

With Roya and Chin Ting also practising the same piece today, there has been an awful lot of G minor!

Tomorrow we’re heading up to London again, this time to hear Wibb give a masterclass. It’ll be a long day, but I’m looking forward to it.

Day 7 – October 7th – Tesco Tuesday

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Suddenly autumn is well and truly here. We haven’t worked out how to turn the heating on, and our landlady was nowhere to be found today, so I am sitting here writing this wearing a big jumper, my new hat (from the bargain bin in Tesco today, but really quite warm and with a bobble) and two pairs of socks.

This morning we had the weekly trip to Tesco, this time to stock up for the whole week. Lots of veggies (I live with the other vegetarians), as well as ginko supplements that will hopefully stop me loosing circulation in my fingers when it gets cold. Then we went on to the most wonderful organic farm shop, despite having already bought all our fruit and veggies. I think Trevor just wanted to show us around.

The rest of the day was practice, lots of scales and exercises. Trevor gave us a particularly devilish one called the ‘Pinkie Polka’ for the workout of both pinkie fingers. We had to sightread it in class yesterday while Trevor stood there looking smug, and I’m determined to get it working. It will be slow progress though, after a solid 15 min of work it still sounds sloppy at crotchet = 50.

Our repertoire for this week is Andante et Scherzo by Louis Ganne, one of the French book pieces that I haven’t played before. I’ve made some good progress with the Scherzo today, but will need to be economical with my time tomorrow as there is so much to get done. I’m hoping that solid practice with a metronome and gradually increasing the speed will get the notes into my fingers enough to play them fluidly on Thursday. Our orchestral excerpt for the week (from memory, as Trevor lightly dropped in) is Après-midi, and I feel that there will be plenty of scope there for further discussion of my vibrato deficiencies.

On our evening walk I ended up as Trevor’s partner (he picks someone each night), and actually had a really good conversation with him. I’d been rather dreading it, as I’m still getting the feeling he finds me a bit over-sure of myself and talkative. I asked lots of questions about his life and career, and told a few stories of my own, mostly about travel. The conversation reminded me what a knowledgeable, experienced old man he is, and I came back to my final hour of practice with a renewed desire to please him. Too bad that my lips gave out after 30 min!