Schumann

Surprisingly, I've had two good violin lessons in a row. (Now we'll see how the next one goes...) Chamber music has been good lately, too. I'm learning so much.

Tonight I performed the first movement of the Schumann A Minor sonata in a recital here, with Nathan as my pianist. Um, it went well! I think this is one of the first recitals I've played where I haven't felt like crying afterwards. I was nervous, of course, but as I played, I kept passing one tricky spot, and then another, and then another... all the places I could have messed up... and everything was going pretty well! I'm happy and relieved. I'm learning a lot by doing this Schumann... it's the perfect piece to help me fix my bow arm problems. Written all over my music are things like this:

"Your bow arm must have a fantastic relationship with gravity!"
"Your strings are the surface of an ocean, not a six foot pool. Your bow is a whale - don't skim the surface - dive to the ocean floor. Play with 300 ft. crescendos!"
"This piece is about how the heavens and the earth moved when he met Clara - that's what all his music was about."
"know which part of your bow arm is doing the moving at each moment."
"Experiement: slower bow, near bridge, dig in, sustain."
"sustain, sustain, sustain!"
"crescendo!"
"sforzando!"
"turbulence, unrest - something is not right!"
"be like a monkey! watch knuckles."
"accents!"
"sting!"
"more! more!"

So yes... I'm working on acquiring a huge sound... and I'm happy, because a lot of people, not even knowing that I'm working so hard on my bow arm and my sound, told me after the recital that my sound was really growing. Yay!

On another note, my back still hurts... a lot. It kind of makes it hard to play.

Time to go watch a little bit of the game!