This week was my second week with UC Davis Symphony. Camellia Symphony had the week off. I didn't have a lesson during my audition week after auditioning that Monday; my teacher was not available that Tuesday (my usual lesson day) and it didn't matter a whole lot to me because I needed to rest a bit after the audition anyway. That means I also had my first post-audition lesson this week.

The Clarke sonata is going on the backburner for now because of all the new orchestra music being piled on. My lesson focused on off-the-string bow strokes and on the Bach suite. I'm not planning to take a lot of my orchestra music into lessons, except when I really need to fix some technique in order to play it well. That was the reason for working on off-the-string bow strokes: in the third movement of the Sibelius violin concerto the orchestral strings spend a lot of time playing a pattern of one 8th note and two 16th notes, spiccato, at a fast tempo, and it's hard to keep the bow bouncing steadily in that rhythm at that tempo. Right now I'm playing in the upper half of the bow with an extreme bow tilt to keep the bow from bouncing too high.

Umbra is a real exercise in extended techniques. I've attached a photo of the first page of the viola part to illustrate. It's very atmospheric, and has some unusual effects like alternating between a harmonic and a fully stopped string. The contact point moves a lot (the "ord. --> MST" means going from "ordinario" to "molto sul tasto" while playing). And you can also see some unusual accidentals: you can see a half-sharp (played a quarter-tone above the natural) and a 1.5-sharp (played three quarter-tones above the natural).

Other than this, UCDSO has continued rehearsing Sibelius 2 (which I'm starting to get much more under my fingers), and the rest of the music for the November concert was handed out but not rehearsed. The other two pieces on UCDSO's November concert are "Prélude à une nuit américaine" (2019) by Mathilde Wantenaar, and "Tabuh-Tabuhan" for two pianos and orchestra (1936) by Colin McPhee. The McPhee looks really interesting; it's a piece fusing Indonesian and Western musical ideas by a composer who was Canadian by birth but lived in Indonesia for most of his life, wrote extensively on Indonesian music, and became a naturalized Indonesian citizen.

In my last post I forgot to mention the virtual orchestra projects I was working on for Untitled Virtual Ensemble. I recorded one of them, the first movement of Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, on Sunday. Next weekend I’m planning to record a more obscure late Romantic piece, Walpurgisfire (c. 1913) by Helena Munktell.

Tonight was Camellia Symphony’s first rehearsal on its new program, for a concert the first week of November. We did a complete reading of Sibelius 2, which was messy, and worked on the third and fourth movements. I didn’t do very well with it either, both because I was exhausted and because auditory cues simply weren’t there with most of the orchestra sight-reading. We also spent some time working on the first and third movements of the Nielsen violin concerto, which I’m excited about because I think Carl Nielsen is one of the most underrated of all composers. Both pieces are going to be a real challenge. We did not rehearse our newly commissioned piece, “Figment” by Laura Schwartz. The viola part for that piece is extremely easy for the left hand (no need to move fingers quickly, all comfortably playable in first and third positions) but a bit challenging for the right hand (rhythmic complexity and lots of ricochet bowing).

About the fatigue: Mondays are challenging for me because my class schedule is packed from early morning to late afternoon, and then I go straight from there to rehearsal; I was extra tired today after going on a long hike on Saturday. (I anticipate the spring semester being more flexible because I’ll be taking fewer classes and mostly working on my thesis.)

I was able to practice some Bach on campus earlier in the day between classes; I already have a favorite spot for outdoor playing at UC Davis, under a live oak in the Arboretum about 50 feet from the law school building. There’s a low, thick stone wall under that tree that I can put my viola case on, at the right height to use my viola case as a makeshift music stand. And the spot is well-shaded for most of the day, which is important in the heat; it was about 90 degrees out when I was practicing. I also have a makeshift practice room inside the law school, a conference room in the basement that was repurposed into a storage room during the pandemic and is still about half-full of boxes even after in-person instruction has returned. The music building was closed for the first month that I was around, because most of the university is on quarter system and only the professional schools (law, medical, veterinary) are on semesters. Now that it’s open again, I need to stop procrastinating and email the music department about getting authorized to reserve practice rooms – now that I’m a member of the orchestra I’m eligible for that privilege.

I recently found by accident (through YouTube) that UCDSO's November 20 concert will be livestreamed on YouTube, which means you all have a chance to hear the concert in real time! Will post reminders later.

What I've got lined up in orchestras now, with YouTube links for people not familiar with the pieces:

UCDSO, October 15

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Virtual ensembles:

I'm trying to decide what to record next for Untitled Virtual Ensemble. There are a whole bunch of projects; due to limited time and energy I've decided to skip the really famous composers (plenty of people are jumping on those projects anyway) and focus on pieces I'm less likely to have opportunities to play in person.
I'm probably not going to be able to prepare in time for their next project (last movement of Amy Beach's "Gaelic" Symphony which is due next week), so I'm targeting one of the two projects due in late November: Lili Boulanger's "D'un soir triste" or the first movement of Vítězslav Novak's Serenade No. 2. Both date from the beginning of the 20th century. Both deadlines are after the UCDSO concert, so I might be able to do both, but I'm not going to try to push myself too hard. If I can only do one, I haven't quite decided which one is more appealing right now, but I think I'm going to wait until after Camellia Symphony's concerto to commit to one.