January 15, 2006 at 11:03 PM

I had my All-State Audiiton yesterday. I'm not sure how exactly it went. There weren't any noticably out of tune notes under my ear, and I was slightly nervous. I only had to play two of the five prepared excerpts. Both were from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. One was a quick run (at qn=144). The second excerpt was the love theme from romeo and juliet. I know the first one went well. I had spent many hours cleaning it up (coordination and pitch). In the middle of the love theme, my nerves got the best of me, and I tensed up in my bow hand and my bow bounced slightly for a note.

The sight reading was okay. The technical sightreading didn't go as well as I had hoped. I messed up on this one syncopated section. I don't think I played too many out of tune notes. It was in the key of D, afterall. However, my bow hand technique failed me, and I ended up playing like a fiddler. I'm still not quite sure what happened. All I know is that I had the most difficult time playing with flat bow hair.

The lyrical sightreading went well. It was almost perfect. The only thing I could think of that I could have done better on was making a bigger contrast between the only two dynamics in the sight reading: mezzopiano and piano. Something ackward about it was that it was in the time signature 7/4. Good thing I had practiced sight reading in those odd times before yesterday (such as 5/4, 11/12, 7/2, etc).

I practiced today. I started off with schradieck. I practiced it slowly at 60 bpm, made sure I got all the notes, and then bumped it up to 80, found my problem spots, and played the problem spots at 60, working on them to get them good for 80. I found many intonation problems. Many of them where in sections that contained extentions.

I also worked on Kreutzer 14. I worked on getting all the right notes at a rather slow tempo, but it isn't really a fast etude, anyways, right? After that, I sang a little bit of it, not for fun, but to try to find phrasings? Well, it's not as easy as it would be with Mozart, but it helped.

Then, I worked on the first movement of Haydn's Concerto No. 1 in C. It is nice. I have it memorized, and I am almost finished working on pitch. I need to work on my bow, though. that stroke that you use on piano sixteenths is not working out well because I am not at the balance point of the bow.

I concluded with Bach. This week, I am learning Minuet II from Partita No. 3. I worked on pitch, fixed everything, and then tried putting it together with Minuet I.

That raps up this weekend. I have tomorrow off (thankfully).

Enjoy the Paganini (the violinist is Szeryng)!

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January 15, 2006 at 11:03 PM

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