Practice my orchestra music

we are mostly playing:

Stravinsky – Pulcinella
Beethoven – Symphony no 8
Haydn – Cello concerto
Weber – Preciosa

Not necessarily in that order.

:)

Mozart – Serenata Notturna
Haydn – Symphony 104 “London”
Schubert – Symphony 3

Classical stuff, though the Schubert has pretensions of Romantic in parts. I have them all on a CD now to listen to in the car.

Wonderful piece!!

Otto Nicolai – Merry Wives overture
Delibes – Coppelia suite
Greig – Norwegian Dances (imagines poodles frolicking the fjords)
Carols for Christmas
Possibly yet to come Elgar’s serenade.

All nice though still challenging stuff

And all that itsy bitsy music is gone and in the past, together with the fiendish Arnold stuff. New season is about to start and we have some proper music this time. Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. I will be much more inclined to practise this.

And I’m back to the airbowing technique again now. Got some more of the music, some Malcolm Arnold, and it is scarily difficult (well it felt so at the first play through). I can’t even practise it this week as it was all gathered in at the end of rehearsal to be bowed. Bowing is the least of my worries, if I can get the right notes in the right order in the right rhythm I will be happy…the bow will go in whatever direction it happens to be facing at the time.

But we don’t have all the music yet. What we have for now is at least playable (if I practice the runs a bit to get them finger perfect). However the easier it is the less inspiring it seems to be. It is mostly background mush and no tunes…so often this is the fate of the second violins. For now I am happy I can play it, by April I might be fed up with it.

And subsequently there is always too much faking and air-bowing going on. I must get to grips with it so that by the time we get to concert I feel confident not panicky!