And we're on to the next orchestral concert program, and already two rehearsals in. The concert is the first weekend of November. The program is:

Ruth Crawford Seeger, Andante for Strings
Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 4
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 2

If Ruth Crawford Seeger's last name looks familiar, it's because she was the stepmother of Pete Seeger and the mother of Mike and Peggy Seeger. She had an interesting musical career: in the 1920s and early 1930s she was very much an avant-garde composer, and was among the first to apply serialist techniques to rhythm and other non-pitch elements of music. From the mid-1930s onward she went in a completely different direction, as she worked with the Library of Congress to record and transcribe American folk music, and her compositions also centered around American folk music. Her Andante for Strings is a rewriting of the slow movement of her string quartet, which dates from 1931 and is one of the most influential pieces of modernist chamber music. The added double bass part is independent rather than following the cello part, so it's actually a bit more complex than the original quartet movement.

Both of the Beethoven pieces caught me a bit by surprise, and are taking more practice time than I expected. I've played both of them before, but with a caveat: I played both of them in 2007-08 when I was bumped to second violin in an orchestra that had surplus violists and not enough violinists, so I hadn’t actually seen the viola parts before this year. (Also, I still had to fake a lot back then, so even if I’d been playing viola I’m not sure it would have made that much of a difference beyond being familiar with how the pieces should sound.) Also, it’s very likely that our conductor is taking them at a faster tempo than what I played before; he tends to follow Beethoven’s metronome marks, and most conductors tend to take Beethoven somewhat slower.

I got a short clip from the first movement of Beethoven's 2nd, taken from my phone on my music stand in Monday’s rehearsal. My playing is rather rough, but then this was only the second week of rehearsal, having had only about a week and a half to practice my part...

We played our orchestra concert over the weekend. It went pretty well... maybe some nervous moments at the very beginning of the piano concerto, but otherwise I thought everything sounded as good as we'd ever played it.

The change in acoustics when there's an audience in the seats does interesting things to the experience of playing. The Seeger piece felt easier to play in concert than it did in any of our rehearsals; I was able to hear other parts much more clearly because there was less reverb and the dissonances didn't saturate the ears as much.

On the other hand, there was a moment in the piano concerto that the concert-night acoustics made much scarier for me. There's an exposed viola moment in the third movement, where the pianist is actually playing a light accompaniment, and the only members of the orchestra playing are divided violas and a single cello. The upper viola line played by the outside players has the melody, with the inside violas and the principal cellist play harmony lines. This is what it looks like in the score with the viola part highlighted (it continues onto the next page of the score), and what it sounds like in performance (31:40 of the video, link should go straight to the spot):

t=1900

I was in an outside seat, so I was playing the melody line. During the concert, I couldn't actually hear any of the other three outside violists playing the upper viola line over my own viola, and the only other violist I could hear clearly was my stand partner playing the lower viola line. So what it sounded like to me was a quartet of piano, two violas, and one cello, with me playing the melody solo! In that situation, you just have to watch the baton and listen to the parts that you can hear, play out a little bit more with your best tone quality (even though it's pianissimo it's really a "solo pianissimo"), and trust that other people are also playing that line.

This concert was a minor milestone for me: after playing Beethoven's 2nd Symphony on Saturday, I've now played all nine Beethoven symphonies on viola. The reason I don't consider it a major milestone is that I already finished my personal Beethoven cycle a few years ago, which was the real major milestone -- it's just that this symphony was the one whose viola part I hadn't played because I was in the second violin section the first time I played it.

I'm going to finish another symphony cycle later in the season: when we play Schumann's 2nd in June, I'll have played all four of Schumann's symphonies.

Anyway, I now have no orchestra commitments for the rest of 2023. Many members of the orchestra play holiday gigs elsewhere, so our next concert is not until mid-February and we don't start rehearsing for it until January. This means I'm only rehearsing a single movement of a trio for now, and will have more time to spend on solo repertoire and technique.

I'm really not working on anything new at this point, just things I've already started. As solo repertoire goes, this means I'm still practicing the Brahms E-flat sonata, Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, and the Hoffmeister concerto; I've added the last movement of the Brahms (was already working on the first two movements) and I'm planning to add the second and third movements of both the Schubert and Hoffmeister.

What I have more time for at the moment is cleaning up technique. This week I've spent a lot of time with the Flesch three-octave arpeggios for the first time in more than a year. The Flesch arpeggio sequence is great in general because it covers all the frequently used chords that contain the starting note, and thus includes most of the arpeggiated figures that you might see in actual music. For me, the diminished seventh arpeggios especially need work to become more fluent, and it'll be useful because diminished sevenths appear a lot in Brahms and other late Romantic music.

I may use a movement of the Brahms at next summer's Sonata Day. I'm planning to learn the rest of the Schubert just for completeness, and I'm still saving the Hoffmeister for a potential long-term project, namely a recital program of viola music composed by lawyers that I'm tentatively aiming to play in 2025, provided that I can get a pianist for it and figure out the logistics. (I do have a potential program in mind for that recital, but I think I'm going to hold off on posting those plans until I'm more sure I'm going to work on the pieces.)

I'm planning my solo repertoire up to two years in advance because I expect everything to take a long time to work up to solo performance standard when I'm doing it on top of orchestra and chamber music commitments. At the moment post-COVID symptoms are still limiting how much I can practice, and when those symptoms go away I expect to have less free time to practice.

ELCBK said

AndrewH said

What I have more time for at the moment is cleaning up technique. This week I've spent a lot of time with the Flesch three-octave arpeggios for the first time in more than a year. The Flesch arpeggio sequence is great in general because it covers all the frequently used chords that contain the starting note, and thus includes most of the arpeggiated figures that you might see in actual music. For me, the diminished seventh arpeggios especially need work to become more fluent, and it'll be useful because diminished sevenths appear a lot in Brahms and other late Romantic music. 

 

Really appreciate you mentioning these arpeggios and their purpose! 🤗

I only learned the major & minor arpeggios as a child (a short-term piano student) & they have stuck in my head to this day, but nothing was explained to me, or gave me purpose to associate with them. 

I haven't played the other arpeggios in 3 octaves, yet - but because you mentioned them, I listened to a video. 

It's really a beautiful thing to hear them played... another thing on my list, now! 

Thank you!

  

When I practiced arpeggios as a piano student, it was always just the major and minor chords starting from the root. That's interesting to me because, once I became familiar with the Flesch arpeggio sequence for violin and viola, it made a lot of sense to learn arpeggios that way.

Of course you can also practice them in two octaves if you're not ready to shift that far up the fingerboard, it's the same general concept.

Not much new in the last two weeks. I'm not practicing nearly as much as I'd like, because I'm still tired most of the time and brain fog is still a problem; I'm getting in 30-40 minutes, 4-5 times a week, which is really not enough for the volume of material I'd like to learn this winter. But there isn't that much pressure because I have no solo performance plans in the near future.

I took advantage of a Black Friday sale and ordered two sets of strings which should cover all of 2024. I'm still sticking with Kaplan Amo despite a big price increase, though I was tempted to try Evah Pirazzi Gold or Peter Infeld because they're not that much more expensive any more.

My cat is a surprisingly discerning mewsic critic. The other day I was watching her over the music stand as I practiced, and her ears went sideways every time I played a note out of tune. She might know the Purrahms just as well as I do by now...