October 2005

October 5th, 2005

October 5, 2005 14:12

I went to the High School Orchestra Festival at the University of Georgia this past weekend. I was able to miss a day and a half of school because of the trip, which was nice. Thursday afternoon, I went to Athens, Georgia with some of my orchestra friends and we auditioned. I played an A major scale and the first page of Mozart No. 3 from memory. I did pretty well on Mozart. I pulled out as strong of a tone as I could on the scale, and it paid off. I ended up getting concertmaster, and a lot of the other kids from my school did well, also.

The orchestra was not that great. We played some Mozart, Mendelssohn, Gould, and Berlioz. They didn't give us time to practice by ourselves. Instead, we just rehersed all day and had recitals at night. The recitals were pretty good. The recital Thursday night was played by college students and the recital Friday night was played by the faculty. The student recital thursday night was ok. The highlight was hearing the annual concerto competiton winners play. this girl played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, which was pretty good, but not up to my standards. She missed a few runs, but her intonation was better than average. THis guy played the Dvorak Cello Concerto. It was great. He has a really good technique.

On Saturday evening, we had our performance. it was pretty good for just having the music for two days. The real highlight was getting to know the conductor and the violin professors at UGA. I think I made a good impression on them. I met two of the violin professors: Dr. Heald and Dr. Ambartsumian. There was a third one who was Dr. Ambartsumian's wife. She played the Shostakovich Violin Concerto at the faculty recital.

I'm working on Schradieck and Mozart Violin COncerto No. 3 right now. Schradieck is getting tougher as I go along. I was hoping it would get easier, but it's not.

I am going to a master class at Kennewsaw State University on October 13th. The Second Violinist from the Pro Arte Quartet is conducting the High School masterclass. I'm sure I will learn a lot. I'm going to be playing the first movement of Mozart.

And speaking of Mozart, and I am learning the second and third movements right now, and I have some questions. How do you memorize a slow movement of a concerto? I haven't really practiced visual memorization before, especially on a slow work. I visually memorized the first movement, but that was after I had memorized it muscularly.

I've also been practicing the third movement. Mostly, I have been playing through teh runs slowly, making sure they are in-tune, and then speeding them up. The third movement is a lot of fun, but there is something about it that makes it difficult for me to play in the correct style.

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