March 12, 2005 at 9:25 PM

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

From John Barrett
Posted on March 12, 2005 at 11:28 PM

You mention your interest in Schubert. I was looking through summaries of his work and see that there were I think two or three violin sonatinas and a violin sonata and two fantasias [or fantasies?] for violin - one with piano and one with string orchestra - pianist Andreas Schiff accompanies his violinist wife in one of them. There is also a violin rondo - possibly two.
I am listening to all the Schubert violin quartets I can find, with www.kunstderfuge.com having numbers ten through fifteen in substantially complete performances I think. I have long been fond of the two great Schubert quintets - the Trout with piano and bass and the C Major for string quartet plus extra cello, which I heard in live performance at New England Conservatory of Music around 1995. The extra cellist was a Harvard alum playing with the Mendelssohn String Quartet. Alexander Schneider performed several Schubert chamber works with Pablo Casals at Marlboro [Vt.] music festivals around 1950. Earlier some were performed at Prades, France.
Schubert wrote an "Arpeggione" sonata with pretty melodies, often played either on viola or cello. I wonder if this would could be arranged for violin?
Is there historical record whether Beethoven performed in string quartets after he began becoming deaf - in stages -while in his earlier thirties? He was able to play the piano and conduct when he had virtually no hearing, -but I should think quartets and other violin chamber playing would be extremely difficult. I know Beethoven's late quartets well from records, but do not know much about their technical aspects - what challenges do they post technically for violinists?
I am very fond of the Cesar Franck violin sonata, which my longtime piano teacher Giuseppe deLellis an alum of Longy School and Nadia Boulanger performed one time with Costa Rican violinist Faith Quesada at the Waltham, Massachusetts Public Library.
In Montreal there is much interest in Vivaldi - I am not a specialist but suspect there is much interesting Vivaldi string repertoire, and if your background includes the Neterlands, there are rich resources of all sorts of really early medieval music.

Best wishes personally and in your career.

John Barrett

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March 12, 2005 at 9:25 PM

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