August 2009

When playing gets tough, the tough play ABBA

August 26, 2009 14:04

I thought I might share this anecdote of mine :) When I was preparing for my grade exam last spring I was getting sooo tired of playing through the same program over and over again and it had gotten to a point of frustration and I didn´t enjoy playing my pieces and at th same time I had my teacher punctuating so much on intonation in Bach A-Minor I was rather fed up. But then I found the perfect solution!

I am a great ABBA fan and know most of their songs by heart and I was brought up with them, So for me the solution was to pop my ABBA CD in the radio and then have fun playing along. Needless to say I soon felt exhilerated and laughed a good deal over the sillynes of playing ABBA, me a serious violin student :-) But it turned out that playing ABBA made me feel restored again and ready to rumble with my pieces. My favourite ABBA song to play is "Mamma Mia" and "Lay all you love on me".

So I´ll be guaranteed to pop ABBA into my radio the next time my violin is driving me mad. So right now me pesonal violin motto is: When playing gets tough, the tough play ABBA!

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Ready for Vocalise

August 12, 2009 11:50

here comes a "shock" announcement:

I am going to play Vocalise by Rachmaninov this year. I have somehow always resented playing this piece and hoped that my teacher wouldn´t give it to me. I must admit that I felt offended when he handed it to me and said: "I think you are ready to play this now". I felt he wasn´t challening me enough since I considered Vocalise not to be advanced repetoire and I wanted a challenge. I had therefore decided no to play it. Now, after listening to it a countless times I have realized that it´s an exquisite piece. It´s such a powerful piece filled to the brim with emotions. It speaks without words, a beautiful, sometimes heart rendering but ultimately a hopeful message, Now, I can´t wait to get started on this piece. I have played it through once and I realized that I just couldn´t wait to get it beautiful.

So now I am ready to play Vocalise. I ve realized that when my teacher said that I was ready he meant that I had gotten good enoug in vibrato to play it (a huge achivement for me :) ) Also that I was ready to explore the beauty of really slow pieces (I ve always had a preference for fast one´s). I have realized that Vocalise is advanced repetoire. After all...the biggest of masters have played it. I am looking forward to walking in their footsteps with this song. I happen to love Rachmaninov´s 2nd piano concerto and now I am loving another piece of his. I´ll come to love more and more soon I think.

So Vocalise, here I come armed with Mya (my violin), I am determined ot master you *background music again of Dvorak 9th, 4th mvt.*

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More entries: July 2009

August 2009

When playing gets tough, the tough play ABBA

Ready for Vocalise

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