This is the second week of the Project. How was the first week?
Second week
I thought it was a good ideia to start by telling you what I've been reading:
On the left you see The Tchaikovsky Papers, edited by Marina Kostalevsky. I'm reading this after the recommendation of a friend. It's been recently released by the Yale University Press and I'm reading it trying to understand more of who this composer was as a person, what shaped his artistic universe and how he related to the world. The book is a compendium of letters from Tchaikovsky and people close to him that were kept secret for centuries.
On the right you see The Art of Possibility, a book written by the conductor and teacher Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Zander, who works with family therapy and arts. I'm reading this book because of the perspective it shows, a different outlook on life, challenges and relationships (like the one I am trying to build with the Tchaikovsky Concerto).
I also would like to share a playlist on YouTube of what I'm watching for this project. You can see it here.
Now off to the practice diaries!
August 28th, 2019 - Wednesday
2nd session of diaries. I still don’t know how to approach the Concerto. I have one hour to practice right now, maybe more time in the evening depending on how tired I will be. I guess that, in order to know how to start, I should watch the videos of the reading, right? But something in me tells me it’s better to start from the 3rd movement, the bow part, the articulation of the 16ths. I feel the 3rd movement is the one more far away from me, not necessarily the one that is going to give me more trouble. There is this video of Zukerman teaching this on the Youtube.
- Body warm up
Random
- 1’ bows
- Articulation of the 16ths on the 3rd movement (only the articulation on the 4 open strings, no metronome, very slow and feeling each one to find out what I want from them)
- Staccato
- Fast bows (4, 3, 2, 1, 1/2, accent this whole bow at 60 bpm)
Yes! A little more than 1 hour only practicing open string, my teachers would be proud!
August 29th, 2019 - Thursday
- Body warm up
- 1’ bows
Random
- Vibrato (with bow)
- Trills (half step)
- Shifting positions, 3rd finger on D string (starting in the Bb 3rd position and doing the G minor harmonic scale)
- Schradieck/Benedetti XV 1a, until 8 notes per beat at 60 bpm
Tchaikovsky - 1st movement
Random
- Measures 54 to 58, singing the sequence (sing a note and play to check, sing next one and play to check, and so on)
- Measures 111 to 118, identifying notes and shifts. Remember to practice listening for each note of the double-stops separately
- Started from 176 to 180. Was playing very slow attentive, then I identified a lot of tension in between notes, stopped just to see this and ended up practicing only half of measure 176. It was worthy! Continue cleaning this passage.
August 31st, 2019 - Saturday
Finally it is a little warmer!
- Body warm up
- Cycle 1234
- 1’ bows (on G string I got up to 75 beats!) (30’)
Random
- Vibrato (with bow)
- Trills (whole step, D string)
- Shifting, 4th finger on D string (A major, starting from A on 1st position)
- 3 octave major scales with correspondent arpeggio (until D major, start next time from Eb major)
Schradieck/ Benedetti XV 1b
(* this was a little longer than 1 hour, the left side of my neck is sore)
Tchaikovsky - 1st movement
(on random, I could practice each passage twice) (45’)
- Measures 41 and 42 (very slow watching intonation, fingerings and bow distribution at the same time)
- Measure 51 to B, same way as yesterday
- Part with fifths and sixths up in high positions: first from 116 to 119, then from 115 to 119 (super slow, with left hand on both notes, but first playing only the lower one, then only the upper one, observing how is the hand more comfortable - or less uncomfortable - to do those notes, both the double-stops and the arpeggios)
- 176 to 179, ultra slow, imagining the next note, observing the between-notes, already thinking about the final bow distribution
Tchaikovsky - Cadenza of the 1st movement
(on random, 3 times each)
- Chords on measures 207 and 209 (Dora’s exercise for right arm on chords, making sure I was in tune, of course)
- A major arpeggios in the beginning (counting how many notes there are in each group of 32nds to organize my rhythmic thinking, exaggerating how much I save the bow and thinking about its distribution on the fast tempo, and moving my left fingers on the Benedetti manner)
- Shifts at the end of the Candenza, that sequence of A-Bb (practicing each shift, in the manner of Dora’s exercise for shifts)
- A little bit of that shift in double-stops (F-D)
I was very sore after this session, I stopped in the middle and did 2 stretching exercises from physiotherapy and it helped a lot! I jus finished practicing, and after 3 and a half hours I am fine. A little sensitive here and there, but fine!
September 1st, 2019 - Sunday
The day I posted the first sequence of practice diaries.
I finished watching the recordings I made of the 1st movement reading. Definitely everything that happens after the Cadenza is a lot less known to me than what comes before. I want to go deeper in the analysis of this movement. I wrote bar numbers on the rest of the 1st movement.
I mapped the form of the 1st movement, so I could see at once where are the big parts and how many bars each one has. This movement is quite balanced and symmetric in this sense. We have:
Introduction (small)
Exposition (big)
Development (bigger)
Re-exposition (big)
Coda (small)
With the panoramic view this map gave me, the movement seems smaller and less monstrous, a sensation of organization and proportions more humanly possible and understandable to work with. I don't feel I'm gonna be swallowed by the piece anymore. A sensation very similar, if not exactly the same, to the one described by clarinetist Paula Pires the other day at a Lecture Recital at the University of São Paulo, about understanding the parts of the piece Harlekin (and Der Kleine Harlekin), by Stockhausen, and saying “Ah, now I can do this!”
Too tired to practice violin. Happy to have done something!
<<< TCHAIK PROJECT 1 - First week
<<< TCHAIK PROJECT 1 - First week
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The Tchaik Project is part of the Master’s Degree Research of Helena Piccazio, enrolled in the Master’s Program in Music at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP).
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