I’m practicing this. Great piece for doing vibrato. 😊 I might post a video to critique corner when I’m ready with this one. 

I have a new piece to practice! Yay! Lied ohne Worte by F. Mendelssohn.

Here is the video where Jacqueline du Pré plays it. Jacqueline du Pré! I’m playing the same piece as her, can’t believe! Well, I have to work hard to make it sound the same. 😄
I like this video because I can see all the time what she’s doing. There is also more great videos of this piece, but very often they shows a pianist just when I want to see a cellist!

Ps. My own teacher is still away, I have had three substitute teachers now... One of them helped me by choosing this new piece so that I can get forward again.

I will get my own cello teacher back next week! More than 2 months have passed and I have had 5 substitute teachers... 

If I look back to the end of September now, I can see that I have made tremendous progress during this time. I’m so eager to show it all to my teacher, he’s not going to believe. 😄

I’m still working with that Mendelssohn’s piece, I’m almost done with it and I decided that it will be the goal for my one-year anniversary in the beginning of January. I will make a video and post it to my facebook site, so that my family and friends will see how much I have learned during this year. 😍

I got also a new piece last week, Arioso by J.S.Bach. My latest substitute teacher had three suggestions for what I could play next, and I chose this because I thought it was the most beautiful melody. It doesn’t feel difficult at all, so maybe I will have these both pieces for my anniversary. 👍🏻

@ELCBK Yes, I had! I really liked my last substitute teacher, but it's so great to get my own teacher back. At the same time, I'm little confused too. He started kind of push me really hard right after he came back. I don't mean he does it in a bad way, I actually like a lot when he's not asking if I can do something but just says let's do this. I don’t always believe in myself, but when someone pushes a little I can do almost whatever. He's probably noticed it...

He gave me a new etude. It's pretty much a bowing exercise, and I think it's just what I need. Playing it will also force me to keep my left hand thumb in the right place. (Not so much under the neck of cello, but on the side of it.) This etude is not easy, it's actually quite advanced. But if he believes I can do it, I will do it!

So there we go again and this feels so good! But 45 minutes once a week is so short time... I would need that twice a week. The last lesson of this year will be next week. I already said that I don't want any Christmas break, I want so much homeworks that I'll be busy during the whole holiday.

Oh dear how I've been busy!

I have had a lot of homeworks and I'm progressing very fast again.
My teacher gave me a new book, Dotzauer violoncello schule vol. 3. I've already done all the 5th position exercises and almost all the 6th position exercises too. Only one etude left, but it really makes my head hurt so much...🤯 I will need a lot of help with it.
I have also started practicing the thumb position with one piece. The related exercises are coming a little later in that Dotzauer book.

I got a book with Finnish cello pieces as a Christmas present, and I've learned couple of them. When I had my lesson last week, my teacher picked one from there that he would like me to play. Chanson sans paroles by Toivo Kuula. You can listen it here. I don't want to say it's difficult because then it sounds like I could not do it, but I say it's challenging, really challenging...

Thanks John and Emily! 😍

Yes, my new cello was chosen by my teacher. It’s a new 7/8 cello, it’s hand made by some Belgian luthier. The cello is now in Germany where my teacher traveled to look for cellos for his students, they will ship all of them next week. So it will be here very soon! I was able to choose the most important thing, which color case I wanted. 😄 I asked my teacher not to bring anything as boring as black or gray so my choice was, of course, bright yellow. 💛