Z Music

May 4, 2010 at 3:06 AM

After finally having made it through the Sitt, I began studying the Zelter Concerto. It is much easier than the Hoffmeister or Stamitz from a technical perspective, however I discovered that easier does not necessarily translate into less work.

I thought I had it easy , but I was sorely mistaken. The smaller details of viola playing are receiving quite a bit of attention: evenness of tempo, articulation, range of vibrato, string crossings, evaluating different choices of fingerings and bowings, and sounding points to name a few. The musical bar has been raised.

Though I do not have to worry about navigating the fingerboard to get the notes right, I am having to put quite a bit of thought into musical interpretation and fine-tuning techniques. The simplest of passages are creating a new challenge in developing a "singing voice". The section of 16th note triplets are forcing me to to focus on evenness in tone across all strings so that notes don't "drop out". I'm having to figure out just exactly where in the bow I should be playing from note to note to get the sound I'm searching for.

No, easier does not mean easy!

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