This Friday evening, at 7:00 pm, my teacher is hosting a Preparatory Student Cello Recital. In addition to his college students, David has ten pre-college students. In this case pre-college has to due with the material played and not necessarily the students age. I make a rather elderly 7th-grader.
The program includes a good selection of Suzuki material, some Lee Etudes, two movements from the G-Major Bach suite, and the 1st and 3rd movement from the Haydn C-Major Concerto. I’ll be playing the Boccherini Minuet.
Not surprisingly a good portion of my lesson yesterday was devoted to the Boccherini. There are some articulation issues I need to work on, specifically making the staccato notes really staccato, and making the nachschlag much shorter.
We also working on Lee numbers 7, 8, and 9. For next week I am to work on numbers 7 and 10. I’m still polishing the Marias Gavotte (Suzuki 3.02). The ascending and descending run of notes in the middle section still gives me fits. I self-diagnosed that my hand isn’t square to the fingerboard. The pronation I have makes it a very long reach for my 4th finger at times and this slows me down. So the goal this week is to play it slow with a square hand.
I’m also working on the Moon over a Ruined Castle tonalization exercise in 4th-position. And David would like me to start 3.04, the Scherzo.
That ought to keep me out of trouble for the next week.