January 23, 2006 at 2:03 AM

I practiced scales for an hour yesterday, which wnet fine, and an hour today.

I got really frustrated today with scales. It wasn't scales. It was doing scales, schradieck, more scales, more schradieck, etc.

And my brain jsut kind of shut down, as if I had done too much technique. Lol, I'm not sure what exactly happened, but my left hand stopped working, I lost all co-ordination and my bow arm just fell apart.

So, I put away the violin and took a few hours, practiced Bach and Kreutzer for about half an hour, and then tonight, I practiced just Haydn for 45-60 minutes.

I love Haydn Concerto No. 1. There is something I liek about ti that i can't quite place my finger on. My teacher told me he has always preferred Haydn to mozart, not only in concertos but also in symphonies. I know that isn't a popular statement, but I must agree with him on concertos. I like Mozart because his concertos are singable, like an aria, and the phrasings can be determined through singing, as long as you have some general concept as to the phrasings in Mozart's music.

haydn's concerto in C is not singable. Well, it is, but not as easily as, say, one of Mozart's concertos.

I am listening to Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 right now. I really like it. The orchestra is the NY Phil. The concert also has the Flying Dutchman overture and the Walton Violin Concerto (James Ehnes). A link to it can be found in the dicussion.

I like the Walton violin concerto. I have a recording of Heifetz playing it in the 1940s from Naxos. Also on the CD is the Elgar VC. I was able to hear a lot of things in the orchestra that I cannot hear in my recording because of the sound quality.

I'm going to visit my middle school orchestra director this friday. He was the one who made violin fun and influenced me a lot and persuaded me to persue violin even more than I was at the time. He was the person who taught me how to hold the violin and bow. I owe him a lot, I suppose.

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January 23, 2006 at 2:03 AM

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