May 29, 2005 at 2:38 AM

Today I broke the four-hour practicing mark for the first time since I can remember this quarter. Not bad considering that it's Dillo Day here at Northwestern--the one day we pretend we're a state school and party. So I will probably be going over to a friend's place in a bit. The photo session went well this morning, and I was pretty pleased with the final pictures, and relieved that I'm done having to look all impeccable and shower for a while. (Just kidding; I do shower.) I have four different shots, three with the instrument, and I ordered some prints, including some wallets for my friends. I'll get them in a week.

Wow, what did I work on today? The last movement of Beethoven with a metronome, and also the cadenza. Then I had some time in the hall tonight and I ran things and got comfortable playing in there. It's very live, which I don't think is great for showing every nuance, but it certainly makes everything ring, which is great if I play in tune. Overall, I'm feeling much better today about performing, and starting to get pretty excited. I'm also making tomorrow first movement day, as I was unable to run the first movement of Beethoven to my satisfaction and had to keep stopping. Particularly since I open the recital with it, it should be extra solid; I think I've kind of slacked on it since I played my transfer auditions last quarter. Even the opening two bars only sound and flow right if I forget about the octaves and think only about the line. In addition, I keep going back and forth between which is the harder piece on this recital, so I should probably just throw up my hands already and submit to the fact that they're both hard. I thought that once I had the concerto out of the way, running the Brahms tonight would be easy, but it's still just as true in the Brahms that every little thing has to be there, and that the appropriately rich Brahms sound comes out freely when it needs to.

Tomorrow: first movements, Beethoven first movement cadenza, opening of Beethoven second movement. That gives me more than enough to tackle.

May 29, 2005 at 2:38 AM

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