March 2005

March 12, 2005 14:25

Saturday evening in Holland. No, I am not going to a bar or even watch a movie. Tomorrow another concert, already at 11, which mean I'll be up at around 5:30am to warm up, get ready and actually get to the old castle where I am playing. Tomorrow is a program with Bach a minor sonata, Yun, Paganini and Ysaye sonata nr.5, which even though some of these pieces are familiar, they still are terrifying for me. In both Bach and Ysaye I have had terrible black outs, and they still spook through my head. But tomorrow it is time to finish that.

Monday I will be back on the plane to New York. Currently I feel somewhat unrooted, with all the travelling going on. Therefor even more a reason to really focus tomorrow in my playing on the roots...
Mr. Weilerstein talks a lot about this in the lessons. Centering is a very important aspect of a good and balanced performance. Not only does it help intonation and sound, it really helps deal with nerves. What do I do during a performance when I feel the need to center?
Well, several things. there are some exercises I do before I go on stage, such as standing against a wall, with my knees in an angle of 90 degrees, back straight against the wall and leaning into the wall, so that is where I get my support. I will play several long notes, untill my sounds "opens" Besides that I try to think back about pleasant situations where I have played, such as a Schubert Rehearsal outside in the swiss mountains or playing Bach all alone in a hughe church.
Then when I go on stage, I really try feeling my feet. That's why you should not focus upon my concert shoes, they are not the most elegant, but they keep me grounded. Then I try and search some friendly faces in the crowd. Like last week in Tallinn: there was somebody who also had been at previous concerts and had told me to stop worrying about a strepless dress on stage. I wore the same dress last week and I made a little gesture recognizing him and thinking back about the funny situation a couple weeks before. That brings me then in a much more relaxed state of mind, now I am doing this for fun (and I am not thinking about the people in the audience I would like to "prove" myself to)
While playing, Mr. Perlman has advised me to think of certain keywords... such as "slow vibrato", "loosen arm", or anything like that.
It is very rare that during the entire performance I will be only focused on the emotions of the music, you know, when you are in the "Zone". In fact last week, I thaught during the performance about very non-music related things, it was almost funny. I used to get angry at myself for letting that happen, for being so unconcentrated. But then you, on top of not concentrating, get emotionally involved with something that is absolutely not helpful. And I stamp appearantly when I am angry during playing (something which drives Mr. Perlman crazy. Occasionally I notice my leg going up, when something goes wrong in my lesson, and I try to hide it, ending in a laughing fit of both Mr. Perlman and I, because I am standing on 1 leg, looking utterly ridiculous!)

In 2003 I had the opportunity to work with a woman who thaught me a lot about "mindfulness". With mindfulness I learned to observe, but also to kindly direct my thoughts back to what should be my focus of that moment. A lot of this was done through focussing on the breath. Just a simple exercise: Count your breaths: in is 1, out 2, in 3, out 4, etc... go till 10, then start again by 1. Start doing this for about 5 minutes, maybe eventually going all the way up to 1 hour... In the beginning I noticed that I counted all the way till 27 before realizing I only needed to count till 10. Sometimes I completely lost count, or at some occasions I even fel asleep ... The most difficult thing however, was to not get frustrated and angry at myself for not even being able to do something as easy as counting, and instead gently direct my mind back to the breath.
So tomorrow I will keep gently directing my mind back to my center and the center of the sound. At least, I'll give it another try...

PS: If you would like to read more about "mindfulness" I can highly suggest some books and tapes by John Kabat-Zinn

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March 8, 2005 10:00

Back from Estonia... During the concert I made an interesting observation about my playing. Sometimes it is truly acting. The last piece on the program was Carmen. I loved this piece as a child, mainly because it was filled with all kinds of violin stuff like left hand pizz, double stops, harmonics, I had no idea how to do, and I dreamed of sometime playing it myself. I have now had the piece in my repertoire for several years, playing it with piano and with orchestras, in all kind of different venues, from Cruiseships, to hospitals, to churches, to concert halls across the northern hemisphere, even the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
This time I got to play it in Tallinn. I did not feel like playing it, somehow I truly lost the joy of that particular piece and it had become just a bunch of noted, preferably fast, faster, fastest... But sometimes we just have to do stuff, even if we don't feel like it. In the end playing concerts is my profession and I am sure that other people don't feel like doing something at work once in a while also, and still show up.
So after Debussy, I went back stage, drank some water and went back on stage. And the act started... I walked on stage and acted Carmen. My walk a little bit flirty, throwing a smile into the audience. It was not conscious acting, it just happened. I tuned the violin, threw a smile to the pianist and there he went off playing the Spanish toreador opening, which awakend an enormous spirit in me. My concentration was good, I took the tempi just a little bit slower, so I had time to color more with bow and vibrato. I took more liberty in timing, using the tension of silence to capture the audience. And all of a sudden it was ok, I knew the audience was into it, the pianist was having fun and so was I (in between double stops)
Making music is an art and therefor requires authenticity. But it is impossible to live your art 24/7... Thank goodness, because if I would have to live the mood of Shostakovich or Mozart or Carmen all the time, I would go crazy. Music knows joy, but also depression, music can be happy, manic, manipulative, seductive, worshipping, holy... Therefor we can not always truly live what we preach, I can not live the moods I am playing all the time and therefor sometimes need to act.
And you know what, sometimes it is truly fun to act. I will never be Carmen, but in music, when I re-enact her, I can be a strong woman, seductive, aware of physical attraction towards men and even manipulating them. That's who Carmen is, that's the experience I would like to give the audience.

The hard thing is that audiences can not always see that what you do on stage is not who you are. In my playing I use experiences I have had, emotions I have felt, stories I have heard, images I have seen (f.i. there is a passage in Debussy, which reminds me very strongly of Middle Earth from Lord of the Rings)
Someitmes after a concert it might take a while for me to come back to reality, after playing Shostakovich violin concerto it is not easy to immediately put on a smile and greet the audience, it takes at least a couple minutes to shake off the intensity of emotions. But it is not who I am, the woman you see on stage might be Carmen, it is not who I am. I hate to take of the magic of a performance for the audiences that are reading this, but it is the truth.
I am always looking for the most authentic performance from the piece's point of view, not mine. And that sometimes means, it does not at all reflect who I am.
Too often people forget that. I see it, looking at Mr. Perlman all the time. I see people struggling with their identities because of that. What we do is not who we are, however in this incredible profession you can take with you who you are and use all of that in what you do...
And I love what I am doing! Honestly, what woman would not want to "be" Carmen for 10 minutes??? :-)

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March 5, 2005 07:01

I am waiting at Schiphol airport and made the most of my time... Had a wonderful meal, a nice chairmassage andI played through the entire recital program with my pianist at the Casino here at the airport!!! Now, that's what I call inventive practicing...

But I am on a public computer and only have 1 minute left... Our plane was cancelled and so we have to wait about 8 hours for the next flight. Keep your fingers crossed we will actually make it to Estonia...

I will write more soon!

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More entries: April 2005 • February 2005

March 2005

March 12, 2005 14:25

March 8, 2005 10:00

March 5, 2005 07:01

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