Orchestra rep: Final Term at Augustana for me!

March 4, 2019, 5:03 PM · I just wanted to write a quick post about how excited I am for our final term of orchestra music for this academic year - and my final term at Augustana! I listened through Johann Strauss II' Die Fledermaus overture, which has all the Viennesse waltz flairs I've known to expect from this composer. I couldn't help going back to 2016 when I went to Vienna that summer, hearing Ravel's La Valse alongside some Strauss waltzes. I also thought a bit of Patrick Doyle's score to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when I would love hearing all the violins playing the melodies pretty much all of the time - that's true here and I can see some stylistic similarities between the pieces. (To be honest I was very excited for a Richard Strauss piece, but this will still be good fun too.) I also listened to half of Aaron Copland's "Billy the Kid" Suite from 1941, which will bring back that jaunty fiddle fun we had when we played from his 1942 ballet Rodeo in fall 2016. This time I'm first violin so I get all the high notes - fun! The other two pieces I am completely unfamiliar with: José Pablo Moncayo's Hupango for orchestra - I saw some of Gustavo Dudamel conducting it with all its Mexican nationalist flair, which is very exciting! Brings me back to when I was first introduced to Dudamel, and seeing him at the BBC Proms 2016 with its Rio flavor for the Olympics that year. The other piece is Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's 1998 "Upbeat!", which is based on Bach's Violin Partita No. 3, which was a motif in my Ysaÿe Solo Violin Sonata no. 2, movement I "Obsession", that I worked on all last term! What a funny connection. There is one other piece that will be performed by the chamber orchestra, which I am part of: Blanca Estrella de Méscoli's Ballet Miniature, which looks to be a fun 1965 piece from Venezuela that looks like it will be really fun. It takes from some Baroque and modern dance forms in its movements.

For my violin lessons, I will be continuing work on the Berio Sequenza VIII as well as working on Elgar's Violin Sonata, a piece I sightread this past summer in 2018 after we had played Elgar's Enigma Variations at the end of that term in orchestra as well. It will be fun to play something different (more tonal!) to anything I have worked on with my teacher this year. I will also be performing for a composition recital at the end of this month, and will possibly have more opportunities on violin as well - of course, my Chaplin piano film score performance will be my big composition premiere this spring as well as my main focus on the piano this term I believe!

It will be a busy term, but I'm excited to put in a lot of effort in my violin, piano, and composing new music! I will also be putting in some major thought as to if I want to do grad school and where I want to go based on what I receive back from the places I've applied, so there will be a lot of decision-making! It's great that I will still have a fun time being a musician and having a great final term in orchestra especially to keep me busy while I do before graduation (!) and this summer.

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Orchestra rep: Final Term at Augustana for me!

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