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Ben Clapton

Recital Prep

October 19, 2006 at 12:23 AM

There's only 4 weeks and one day until my recital. *expletive deleted*! That's slightly scary.

We had a bit of a talk about recital preperation and concert nerves yesterday. The main suggestion was to go through the recital in your head as many times as possible. While the lecturer was talking, I was getting nervous, thinking about the recital... scary! But it's all good - I've started visualising my recital, getting in the right frame of mind, so I'm pretty sure I'll be ok.

I've got some performances before the big one - a mini masterclass where i can perform and get comments back from the lecturers on Saturday, and a lunchtime concert at my old school where I can get some recital practice - not only running part of the program, but performing it in front of people, and practicing my pre-concert preperations.

As for how my pieces are going - Bach is fine, minor cleaning to produce pure notes, and slight variations in how I'm performing it, especially the siciliano. I was going to take it slow, like really slow, but after listening to it on a recording that I made, it doesn't have the effect I wanted, so I'll have to speed it up a bit. My Beethoven sonata is fine, some cleaning spots in the second and third movements which I've pretty much covered, so that's awesome.

The Sarasate - I still need to work on the second page. I can do it in tempo, just miss a few of the notes. So some cleaning and practice up to tempo is required. I'm almost getting all the notes in tune, and am getting into the style as well, so that'll be fine.

All in all, it's going well.

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on October 19, 2006 at 3:06 AM
Greetings,
Ben, if you are going through the recital in yur head and being scared you are on the right track. Sweat it out man. Recreate the coicumstances and perfromanc ein your head as often as you can, bearking yourself into a cold sweat of fear. By the time you get to do it your brain will have had enough and it will just be ...ho, hum.
Cheers,
Buri
From Pauline Lerner
Posted on October 19, 2006 at 6:23 AM
Good luck at your recital, Ben.

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