Themes already emerging this week:
- preparing both right and left arm levels for shifts to new string or position
- being fluent in tenor clef.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Lessons Week of 9/9-9/13
Write a comment by the end of the night of the day of your lesson this week. Remember that blogging is 10% of your final grade. Starting this week you must complete this by the end of the day of your lesson to receive credit.
Themes already emerging this week:
Themes already emerging this week:
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At my lesson, Dr. Edberg talked about exaggerating dynamic and tempo changes while learning a piece in order to embed them into my feeling for the work. Later in the learning process, these characterized expressions can be scaled back in order to present a more ernest effect. He called it "Brahmsing" in reference to Brahms' habit of using wildly fluctuating tempos when first conducting his own pieces. In later performances, Brahms would minimize his variance. This week, I hope to apply this and other techniques (like playing fast passages in various rhythms) that I learned and of which I was reminded.
ReplyDelete*earnest
DeleteThe first teacher I had who encourage this (exaggerating ideas and even doing things not in the score) was the great violinist Louis Krasner. He was the concertmaster of the Minneapolis (now Minnesota) Orchestra for many years, and a chamber-music legend. I got to work with him at Tanglewood the summer between my sophomore and junior years. We were working on a Schubert quartet. Someone wanted to do something not in the score (I think it was a crescendo) and was chastised by someone else (maybe me!). Mr. Krasner interrupted and encouraged us to try ANY idea. Not that he didn't have a great reverence for the score, because he did. But he also knew we shouldn't live in fear of trying a new idea.
DeleteWhen I was a student, and even later, I'd sometimes find myself not trying an idea because I was afraid it would be wrong or my teacher wouldn't like it. Most teachers, including me, love for us to have musical (interpretive) ideas. Even if they challenge them and show alternatives.
During my lesson this week I continued working with Dr. Edberg on the first movement of the Schumann cello concerto. Many ideas were thrown around throughout the lesson but the main aspect I took away was to study multiple scores and editions of my repertoire. I have become so bogged down with the single edition over the past few weeks that it is actually holding back where I can take the Schumann next. Likewise I need to begin feeling the piece is larger sections and meshing them together into one line. Right now I am still feeling each phrase as one unit but I need to think of bigger picture ideas while gaining a greater handling of the notes.
ReplyDeleteI'll expand on this.
DeleteFirst thing is to know what the composer wrote (or get as close to it as possible). That's why we want to use scholarly, critical "Urtext" editions whenever possible. Even in edited editions, the cello part in the piano part is usually not edited.
Then there are very valuable performance editions which offer the solutions your predecessor cellists have developed (fingers, bowings, etc.).
If you start from a performance edition, you don't know what is the composer and what is the editor. You also may get inadvertently locked in to the editor's fingerings and bowings, with your own ideas not occurring to you because you are seeing someone else's fingerings.
Comparing various performance editions to the Urtext is terrific--you try your own ideas first, then if you are stuck, see what someone else has done.
I have sometimes taken an edited cello part and used whiteout to remove all the fingerings and bowings, then put in the original (unedited) bowings, and started from there.
During my lesson, Doctor Edberg worked a lot on relaxing my fingers and slightly lifting my fingers when I shift. During the quick scale passages in Rococo Variations, relaxing my fingers on my left hand especially in the higher range helped my accuracy and clarity in the run. Also, when I am doing my runs, with my bow hand, he taught me to use short and light bows during the low notes and then as it crescendos, I would expand the length of the bow in order to reach the final note.
ReplyDeleteIn the first variation, the beginning has a lot of string crosses and I learned that it is vital to keep your arm up to the level of the highest string in order to use less motion in the arm and the for the left hand, when shifting down, I would slightly lift my first finger to allow my other fingers to relax that helped tremendously in the accuracy and clarity.