Sight Reading

March 14, 2008 at 6:37 AM

One of the things I love most about my quartet group is sight reading new pieces, and often.

We have moved on to Mendelssohn quartets, and played one of the Minuets. Everything was going fine, until the TRIO section, when I noticed, to my dismay, one little word: "solo". As a violist, solos are not common. However I am finding that they are more frequent than I had expected.

This particular movement had some shifting challenges. Shifting up to third position (and higher) is easy enough in some circumstance, however in this piece, it wasn't obvious on a sight-reading on WHEN to shift. The result - arghhh! I took it home to figure out the shifts, red-faced with embarrassment.

I guess this is what sight-reading is all about... testing your skills.

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on March 17, 2008 at 1:35 AM

Greetings,
Mendy, here is a neta litlte trick. Take a very simple peice or etude and play it only with a first finger. Thsi will improve your shifting.;)
Cheers,
Buri

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