After a week off for cello camp I had my first lesson in two weeks on Monday. Since I’ve signed up for a music camp in early July that David is hosting, he gave me my music folder and we reviewed those pieces. We also looked at the orchestra pieces I’m working on for August. He gave me the final two pieces for orchestra. For the time being I’ll be setting aside the Suzuki work to focus on all the orchestra oriented literature I have.
I’ve gone from having one or two pieces and an étude to work on each week to a total of a dozen pieces to work on. It’s both exhilarating and intimidating.
##Orchestra I’ve been working on the Vivaldi Concerto Grosso and figured out most of the second page. I’m still playing it considerable slower than the performance tempo but I feel like I am making excellent progress. David agrees as he said that even a few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to get this far on my own.
I’m also working on the Brook Green Suite. The first page is all variations on descending C: Major scales. They are deceptively easy looking and surprisingly hard to play well. The two-octave scale-wise pattern repeats the middle C sometimes but not others, and doesn’t always start with middle C. I need to move my bow a bit faster to get better sound quality. Every time I’m confronted with long slurs I am afraid I’ll run out of bow and the resulting slow bow gives off a grating sound.
I haven’t been ignoring my earlier work on An English Suite. While I haven’t played it as much recently I can still get through the first page. I need to increase the tempo and move on to the second part of the piece.
##Music Camp Music camp starts a week from this Monday and runs for three days. In addition to theory and an examination of some Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals we’ll be playing several pieces. David introduced me to them by playing parts of each. These pieces are quite a bit easier than the orchestra pieces so I am hopeful that I’ll be well prepared by the time camp starts on July 9th.
##Suzuki For now we are going to set aside the Bréval Sonata in the Suzuki book. With a dozen pieces to begin mastering I have more than enough to focus on without my regular studies.