November 2, 2004 at 9:03 PM

I rushed to my concert on Sunday, only to have the pianist be late -- as mentioned earlier, I'd never heard the accompianment for Barber 3rd movement and I was DYING with nervousness that it was going to be awful. So, since I didn't get to run it through with him, I pull out my music (it was a laid back recital) and figure, at least I'll have it to count the rests should I mess up. I stick it on a low stand, smile, and bow. He starts. I come in... 1 bar too early. I try to keep going but, decided, you know what, I didn't like the tempo he chose anyway, so I said screw the mentality of always keep going, I was never going to get through the piece like that, so I asked to start over. My shoulder rest almost falls off, and thinking my pianist would notice my fixing it, I say nothing, since I'm taking one tenth of a second to fix it and assume he'll wait for my nod (since he was looking at me). No such thing happened. He started, I didn't have my violin up, he was looking at me like 'why didn't you come in?' and I'm looking at him like, how can you possibly start without the violinist being ready?! You're professional. We've played millions of times together. Anyway. We start again, this time I count the two bars and come in at the right time, and we're off to the only thing I can define as not a completely-disastrous-performance because I kept my cool and not only got through the piece, but did it well. But all my rests throughout the piece were definitely not fun, since he skipped measures at random and gave me no chance to even try to count them. Piece over, didn't get that high A, but smiled, bowed, thanked the pianist, and returned to my seat as if I was Heifetz.

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November 2, 2004 at 9:03 PM

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