06 II 2002 - 23:36 - trivialis22

I went to see the concert held by the Naumberg Competition co-winner for this year. The Naumberg Competition rotates among instruments; this year, it was for cello, and I guess two first prizes were awarded. Or something like that. At any rate, it was an interesting concert. Interesting in the sense that I can't really understand how he won, given the kind of players who have won in the past. Are today's players really all that bad? It's not that the man was bad, per se; his left-hand technique could not be faulted (except for a couple of false shifts). He had really weird dynamics, however, and it didn't seem as if he was putting much expression into the music. Also: his bow control was really good, but there was no weight behind it, so many of his phrases disappeared into thin air. The balance was weird, too. I did really like his pianist, though, and I don't think it was the pianist's fault that the cello was inaudible at times. It's sort of hard to blame the pianist when the same volume issues are present in the solo material as well. Overall, it was a pretty dissatisfying concert; although I couldn't have done better, I think I know people who could have. In case you're wondering: the first half of the program was the Boccherini A Major sonata, a Ligeti solo cello sonata, and the Beethoven D Major sonata; the second half consisted of the Kodaly cello sonata (by far the best of the evening, although it too had its odd dynamic problems) and the Schumann Adagio and Allegro.

Gosh, that was pretty concise and listed all my grievances. Why can't I be like this all the time? More to the point - why can't I give my chamber orchestra teacher this URL for credit for doing a concert report? (Answer: because I rail and rant against his class and the people in it far too much for the URL to be a very safe thing to give him. Nice try, though, J.)

Mmm, the violinist from my trio left a message saying that he wants to schedule a make-up rehearsal, since our pianist hurt his thumb skiing and he didn't show up last week (= last week's rehearsal was wasted). Where is this make-up rehearsal? At our pianist's house in Berkeley. When does he want it to happen? 7. Right... during... the middle... of rush hour.

So right now, I'm enjoying this fantasy of a rather rude phone call:

"Hello, [violinist from our group]? you may not be aware of this because you live in the east bay, in a wonderful boondock suburb, but quite honestly, i don't see how the terrible traffic in the san francisco bay area could have escaped your notice unless you were on CRACK because you must have gone through it, trying to get to the city. You know that everyone who works in the City is trying to get back to the East Bay before 7; I therefore regret to inform that YOU ARE A THUNDERING LOONY if you expect me to be able to make that rehearsal."

Now, I'm not being fair. He was very nice about it, and said that if I couldn't make it, I could call him, and we would try to work out something else. But really. Arrrrrrrrrrgh. When would I leave the City, 4? (And I can't; I have a lesson until 5.) *kicks the wall*

The concert wasn't entirely a waste; the Ligeti gave me a good idea for one of the movements I want to play with Al. But not really, because the movement would be for the second cello (imagining Katy), punctuated by colorings from the first cello, and... well, maybe one long note at the end for Al. Ha. Revenge of the cellists.

Oh gods, am I sore from PE yesterday. The person who was playing badminton with me joined the team, which means that I now - oops, I wrote about this yesterday. I did some things involving weight machines, which was bad bad bad of me (it's bad for the arms if I want to keep on playing cello), so I'm terribly sore as I haven't done this in a while.

And also: my excerpts suck. They are horrible and sound all right until you pay attention to the fact that my tempi are irregular. I have three days to fix this. I am not confident about how much progress I will make.

Far too much to do and far too little time to do it in... *sigh* To Latin. That will make me feel inadequate... and strangely better.

J