The orchestra concert went well. Not much more to say about it, especially because I haven't seen any video from it that I can post. I now have no orchestra commitments until January, which means I can focus on technique and solo rep for a while.

While I was focused on the concert, I didn't notice that another virtual orchestra video was released that I recorded a track for. There was a production backlog for a while because life got in the way for some of the people who do the mixing. It's finally getting cleared, with a whole bunch of virtual performances being released in October. So this is actually something I recorded for back in January, finally out now.

This is the first movement of the Serenade in D major, Op. 36, by the early 20th century Czech composer Vítězslav Novák.

I haven't recorded anything for virtual orchestras since the Boulanger piece I posted earlier, but I do have plans to record a couple more tracks this month for projects that are relatively low effort for me because I played the pieces recently: Uranus from Holst's Planets, which I played in June, and the first movement of Brahms's 4th Symphony, which I played in September.

The project that I'm planning to host, Nepomuceno's overture to O Garatuja, is on hold until my brain is less foggy.

Oh, one more thing: this week I discovered (via YouTube) a viola sonata I hadn't been aware of, and it's going in the queue of pieces to learn eventually. I've already gone to IMSLP and printed the viola part. It's so obscure that a search for posts in all the Facebook viola groups I'm in didn't turn up a single mention of it, which is strange given how sparse the Romantic viola repertoire is. Seeing as Brahms is my favorite composer, and Ludvig Norman had exactly the same influences as Brahms and was associated with some of the same people, it's probably not surprising that I'd like his work.

Lots of catching up to do. Post-COVID syndrome is still a problem; less of one than before, but as it improves I’m trying to push myself a bit more with solo rep and with being more active in general, so I end up actually being less able to write about what I’m doing!

My orchestra season just ended. I continued playing in Camellia Symphony for the whole season. In early May I felt like I had recovered enough to add a little to my schedule, so I returned to UCDSO for four weeks to play the final concert of their season. That turned out to be a little too much, and caused constant exhaustion, but at least it was only for a few weeks. I now have the rest of the summer to continue building up. I’m registered for the CalCap Chamber Music Workshop a month from now, which is going to be more intense because it’s all day every day, but it’s also only a week so I think it will be manageable.

Solo rep has been moving along, still at a much slower pace from what I used to do before, but steadily. I’m now able to play the entire first movement of the Hoffmeister viola concerto cleanly at about 85% of my target performance tempo, and all but a few tricky spots at performance tempo. I’ve also written my own cadenza for the first movement (not entirely finalized, I may still make changes), which is the first time I’ve written one for any concerto. One of these days I’m going to record the cadenza and post it, maybe some time next week when I’ve recovered from the two concerts. I’m also getting more comfortable with the first two movements of the Brahms E-flat major sonata, at the low end of the tempo range I’ve heard in recordings.

I have both chamber music and solo performance opportunities coming up, too.

In 2019, I was introduced to an informal amateur chamber music club in my area. It has two house concerts a year, in January and June, where self-organized chamber ensembles can perform a movement of a piece in front of a supportive audience of other amateur musicians. There is also a “Sonata Day” in August where string players can perform a movement of a sonata with a pianist from the group. I played the last movement of the Glazunov string quintet at the January 2020 concert, which of course was the last one before the pandemic shut everything down. The club resumed its house concerts in January, but somehow I did not hear about it because I had dropped off the email list. I’m guessing it’s because I was the last new person to join before the pandemic, and the person maintaining the club roster forgot to add me. I found out later this spring that it was back, and went to the June concert, because the social hour afterward is where people start figuring out groups for the upcoming concerts. I brought in a new member too: an old friend from college who moved to the area recently, and who happens to be an excellent pianist and interested in playing chamber music.

By the time I left, I’d signed up to indicate I was interested in playing on Sonata Day with my pianist friend (it’s not a final sign-up), though we haven’t decided on a piece yet. I’ve been working on the Brahms E-flat major viola sonata, which the pianist doesn’t know. He knows the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata very well from having played it with another violist shortly before moving here, and I’m at least somewhat familiar with it, having spent some time learning it before my spate of injuries between 2018 and 2021. So he’s going to start working on the Brahms, and I’m going to start working on the Schubert, and we’ll try to decide on one or the other in the first half of July.

I’ve also had a conversation with a violinist and a pianist about possibly playing something in January. We would need to add a cellist to play a piano quartet. Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot for violin, viola, and piano that isn’t an arrangement of something else, but I have at least one possibility in mind in case we can’t find a cellist.

I was able to resume playing during the second week of August, too late to play the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata on Sonata Day. (Oh yes, it appears I forgot to mention we decided on Schubert.)  It turns out I may have an opportunity to perform it anyway, on a date TBD. Sonata Day was mistakenly announced as August 19 when people were signing up, and two of the people who signed up were going to be out of town on the 12th, so they arranged to have their own mini-recital on September 10, and when I recovered and resumed playing I was added to that recital. Unfortunately, this week the host had to withdraw from hosting for health reasons (these events are all in people's homes), and we're now trying to figure out a new time and place.

Orchestra rehearsals started on Monday the 14th, which snuck up on me a little because it's a week earlier in the year than we've usually started in the past. Our first concert of the season is also a week earlier than usual. It's another challenging one (as they always are):

Nancy Galbraith, Midnight Stirring
Sergei Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3
Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 2

All three are going to need a lot of practice. Brahms is my favorite composer, and a month from now I'll have played three of his four symphonies... but No. 2 has some serious rhythmic challenges in it, and some very chromatic passages that I still haven't decided on the best fingerings for. (And part of this is not having had time to practice in advance, because I wasn't playing at all until a few days before the first rehearsal.)

Other than that, the arrangement I did for Marijke this summer is live! That's in the "Start Your Own Project Here" forum.

Well... we ended up picking neither. We met again last night, and in the time in between, we had some time to familiarize ourselves more with all the pieces. We were originally thinking Scharwenka would likely be too much work, but it's mostly just hard to sight-read because of all the chromaticism in it. The piano part, which I thought might be the limiting factor, is actually a bit easier than the Reuss after a couple play-throughs. (The third movement is another story, which is why we're not playing that!)

So here's the piece. Although the first movement is marked "Andantino tranquillo" it's really not very tranquil: it's a bit restless throughout and the development gets very agitated.

Yes, just the first movement. We're supposed to aim for about 10 minutes of performance time, because there will be a bunch of groups performing. (There were 7 in June when I attended the house concert but didn't play, there were typically 8-10 groups before the pandemic.) Playing the whole trio would be too much. Also, we wanted to make sure we picked something we can definitely give a really polished performance of, because no matter which of the pieces we picked, it would probably be a first impression of the composer for almost everyone in the audience.