Practice Makes Perfekt: January 2009

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Schubert, Schumann, Breval, and No Shows

Our violinist canceled at the last minute for chamber music this evening. Normally, if I know a violinist will be out, I can tap hubby to fill in. But this happened too late. So we had a pianist play the violin part for the Schubert Trout and we limped through it. I had marked up a score without measure numbers and that proved to be a hindrance as well.

Since we didn't have the violinist, we skipped rehearsing the Schumann for the second week in a row. At least this time, I hadn't been practicing it all week.

At the end of class, the violist was working up a Bruch piece, so I grabbed a pianist to try out the Breval in super slow mode. The run through wasn't too bad. Only missed a few notes and the mordents. I knew the piece well enough that when we got off track, it was fixable. Who knows, maybe I'll get to play it for this term's recital.

Progress Report on memorizing Suzuki Book I. I'm having my usual issue with remembering which notes are slurred.

Studying Chinese Again

When I received an email last month with a 25% discount off the local community college's Intensive Mandarin Chinese evening course, I sprung for it. I haven't reviewed my putonghua since 2004 and thought it might be a good refresher. The course teacher is male and has a different spin than the female teachers I have had in the past. This course also covers the character writing which is very useful.

Distracted by cello and humanities I haven't focused much on Chinese studies yet but it's starting to get exciting. Just browsing through the internet last night and found tons of resources. Especially on YouTube. There's karoake with pinyin. So much more to study than there was 5 years ago.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Caught Cheating

R had me play thru etude on Book I today with one of the students. Unfortunately, I did forget a few phrases on a couple of pieces and had to look them up. R came in and closed the book on me. Also insisted that I leave 1 down while playing ext. 4 for the last piece in the book. That's gonna hurt!

Friday, January 23, 2009

Short Term Goal

Now that I've overwhelmed my senses reviewing 500 years of art history in two days. I'll try to focus on a short-term cello goal.

January 31st will mark a year of cello practice for me. Yeah, yeah, I know I started the cello and this blog April of 2007 but after discounting time off travelling, I'm just now coming to the 52 week mark.

Anyway, my goal is to be able to play the Suzuki book I with the CD from memory by the end of the month. I have about two more songs to memorize. Wish me luck!