June 11, 2011 8:16 p.m.
Yesterday evening, Sweet Girl and Chips participated in the end-of-year Honors recital at our local Suzuki school. Sweet Girl played Bach’s Gavotte in D major, a piece from the Suzuki Book 3 repertoire. We have never heard her play such an advanced piece before, and so cleanly and “in tune”. We were really proud of her performance. She told me in the car she was going to do her best. She truly did.
Since this recital wasn’t scheduled until mid-June, we decided to have Chips do a new piece. The competitions ended in Mid-May, and to tell you the truth, we had had enough of the music he prepared all year long. So three weeks ago, Miss S gave Chips this piece to learn, Song Without Words, by Tchaikovsky. I like it because it is very different from anything he has played before, and gave him an opportunity to show a different level of expression. However, he was annoyed by the piece because of all the “unnecessary shifting”, in his words. But he did okay with the shifting, I think.
Health issues: our violin teacher was suffering from a particularly bad migraine, and didn’t make any promises regarding her piano accompaniment yesterday. And Chips, too: as I have been complaining this week, Fifth Disease has affected my fingers, toes, and lower legs, causing weakness and intermittent pains, even now. Well, Chips has also complained that his fingers (and feet) showed more fatigue than usual this week. He seemed to get a bit of a more “adult” manifestation of the virus than Sweet Girl did.
Summer is finally here. It is time for a little rest for us all!
4 comments:
The children did well in their competitions. You are doing an awesome job encouraging them to use their talents. I'm glad they enjoy it so!
Hope you and Chips start to feel better soon.
Lovely! I enjoyed listening to Sweet Girl's piece--I must have learned that at about her age, and my fingers wanted to play along! It's interesting to me how my mind and hands seem to still know the songs they haven't played in years.
I think I agree with Chips about too much unnecessary shifting in his piece, but he pulled it off beautifully! I'm not sure I've heard that one before--he played very nicely.
Spoken like a true violinist about the shifting! It sounds great tho, and so good to get the challenge of a different type of music.
Loved Sweet Girl's Gavotte!
Wow! you all deserve a little R&R! Those pieces were beautiful!