October 2008

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October 26, 2008 09:11

I have such a love-hate relationship with orchestra right now. On the one hand, I've always loved playing in orchestra, I have a great conductor, and it's one of my career goals, you could say. I love the feeling of working together in an orchestra, and the amazing sounds we can get when we do it right. I've also held various principle seats recently, and enjoy the leadership experience.

But. When you're recovering from tendonitis, an opera is not exactly the best on your body. We're doing Kurt Weill's "Streetscene" and, aside from the usual challenges of page after page of unfamiliar music, it has some challenging, awkward passages of questionable tonality. ;) All I can say is thank God I'm second violin. But still, I'm principle 2nd . . . so I still can't just fudge my way through the part.

Before I go on, I'll rewind two days to Friday, when I had another lesson with the pianist who helped me last month (See the post before this). I played a little Bach for her, and she tweaked my posture a little more: I need to stand with my feet wider to support my shoulders. To stand straight, it also helps if I think of stepping forward on my right foot slightly. I also need to keep thinking of having my jaw open and relaxed. One thing I've noticed lately is that my left wrist still gets irritated fairly often. I've been really watching my shoulder level and making sure I don't contract my thumb muscle. Still, just the action of moving my fingers caused pain after a while. One thing this teacher told me was to keep my left elbow out away from my body more. She said I'd gotten into a habit of contraction and control, so I should focus on opening and releasing. I'm finding this helps quite a bit. Also, with the finger action itself, I really need to keep working on only using as much pressure as necessary, and thinking of the motion as lifting and dropping, rather than placing. So that's the diagnosis for my left side. For my bow, she really wanted me to use more free motion with my elbow - not side to side, but up and down. She had me envision a helium balloon attached to my arm, which was what cause my arm to move. It looks kind of funny when I bow this way, but it does feel freer and more relaxed, and doesn't seem to inhibit my sound at all. So, I'm going to keep experimenting with it.

Which leads back to that love-hate relationship. After I played a little Bach for her, she asked me to play something else, more difficult, so she could keep diagnosing me. I had to explain that I really wasn't working on much solo repertoire right now, because I had to keep up with orchestra. And the old repertoire I used to play, I just couldn't now, because I had learned it with such a different set of technique. She immediately grew concerned about this situation, and wanted me to try and get out of orchestra. The thing is, there aren't a whole lot of strong violinists here right now, and my scholarship is dependent on my playing in orchestra. It's an awkward situation, and as I was explaining it, I found myself getting emotional. It's been a long time since I've gotten upset in a lesson, and I guess it was just the release of feelings that have been building up unconsciously over the past couple months. Honestly, in that moment, I felt like a failure. I'd been struggling to keep up in orchestra, and now the only thing I had to show for my solo playing was one page of Bach. This from the girl who was concertmaster last semester and went to Aspen.

I hate feeling so behind. But I agree that orchestra is not helping my situation. What I need is a couple solid months of careful, personal practice of MY music, the music that's going to help me really fix my playing. The opera opens Nov. 7, so I don't see how there's any way I can get out of it at this point. I can probably skip the holiday vespers concert in December, and even that will be a big help to me. That, plus Christmas break, makes two good months without rehearsal where I can really focus on my playing and try to fix these things for good. I've also decided to get a minor in viola, so maybe I can play viola in orchestra next semester so I have a slightly lighter load. I just hope this plan works. I really really want to get back to normal.

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