July 25, 2005 at 6:05 PM

Well, my friend Patrick, who is a violist, order Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for both of us to play. My other friend, Brian, who plays cello, ordered the Brahm's Double Concerto for me and him to play. So, I am going to have a good few weeks, or months, learning these concertos, and rehersing them with my friends.

If everything turns out all right, I might be able to play one of the pieces for the Spring Concert at my high school.

That would be a lot of fun. And since I am only going to be a junior this year, it would get me ready for next year, when I get to play my senior solo.

I still have no idea what I want to play for my senior solo. I have a good while to decide. I don't want to pick something with a difficult orchestra part, because I know most of the people in my school orchestra are too lazy to practice and don't take music seriously.

Something that is really cool is that patrick and Brian got together and played Beethoven's Eyeglasses duet, or something like that for viola and cello.

But, getting back to my violin playing. have lessons today, later on. I will be playing Bruch Concerto No. 1 with my teacher accompanying me, the entire thing.

And I have one last concerto to learn before i have to move on to another teacher. I'll miss Elana. She's taught me so much over the past two years. I remember where i was when i first started. i had bad bow control, poor intonation, a terrible bow hand, and weak vibrato. And I remember a year ago (when I was 15), how happy I was that I could play Vivaldi's Four Seasons, because those four concertos used to be my favorite to listen to, even when I first began playing violin when I was 11. I first started taking violin lessons the summer before I started high school, so I was 14 at the time. I'm 16 now and I can play Bruch, Lalo, and Mozart (plus a little Paganini). So, I have made a lot of improvement.

And one last concerto. I want to play something big: a popular concerto, maybe something by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven, Sibelius, Saint-Saens, but those are all over my head, haha.

Maybe I could convince my teacher to let me learn Saint-Saens, or if not that, I could very easily learn Mendelssohn. The first mvmt of mendelssohn is not that hard at all. I was able to sight-read most of it. There are just a few intonation spots to watch out for.

My teacher is Elana Nolte. She's not a big name soloist or anything. She did study from Peter Haase, who went to Juilliard and studied from Galamian. Mr. Haase went to Juilliard the same time as Isaac Stern, which is funny. Mr. Haase didn't have a good bow at the time, so Stern let Haase borrow one of his! Mr. Haase also studied under Henryk Szeryng for a little while.

Well, it's time for me to go.

From Jude Ziliak
Posted on July 28, 2005 at 9:36 PM

Hmm-- I'd actually say that Mendelssohn is considerably harder than St-Saens, even if easier to sightread. It has to be played very cleanly, and ends up being really awkward. Not that St-Saens is easy, but it's not much harder than Lalo (easier than Lalo finale if you ask me).

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July 25, 2005 at 6:05 PM

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