Hey there! Just arrived? Check out the TCHAIK PROJECT Introduction here.
Readings of the week:
On The Tchaikovsky Papers I'm still reading the Introduction and there I already found some interesting information. For example, the fact that letters were considered a literary genre and that those in the book, specially from Piotr's parents and his early letters belong to the Sentimentalism era, where feelings were the important issue. The fashion of the letter's text excerpts they put on the Introduction give a glimpse of the relation between this kind of text and Tchaikovsky's music.
I read that not only his homosexuality was hidden from the public but also his preference to monarchy and Russian orthodox christian religion, and his musical heritage. For the atheist Soviet Regime it was important that one of the main Russian heroes was in line with the new beliefs.
When Tchaikovsky was young there was a governess in his house for 5 years, Fanny Dürbach, who introduced him to several educational books written by women, all of them european. "The information provided by Fanny Dürbach further illuminates the cultural landscape of Tchaikovsky's upbringing, which served as an aesthetic background throughout his entire creative life." (p. xvi) They kept writing letters to each other throughout his life and met once again in 1893, his final year.
On The Art of Possibility I'm on the 3rd chapter, Giving an A. The author explains it a lot better than I do:
This book makes me think: what if I give myself an A? What if, with this Project, I'm actually trying to go from the World of Measurement to the Realm of Possibility?
Tchaikovsky’s page on Wikipedia in Portuguese: interesting information all around the article. One that caught my attention in particular was that when Tchaikovsky was little he used to play Mozart, Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. And it struck me: all opera composers! It means that it makes sense to think of an interpretation of the Violin Concerto in terms of characters too, not only feelings!
Discussion on Violinist.com about cuts on the 3rd movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. With this one I was just trying to figure out if I could practice any less. But no... In order to decide for a cut I should practice the whole thing, analyze, feel and then decide.
September 3rd, 2019 - Tuesday
- Body warm up (just timed it, it takes 5 minutes and a half)
- 1’ bows (30’)
Random (35’ + 10’ break + 25’)
- Minor scales on 3 octaves with correspondent arpeggio
- Vibrato (with bow)
- Shifting positions on the E string, 1st finger (starting on the A 3rd position)
- Schradieck/Benedetti XV 2. (I just realized I never finished this book, and that I just decided to keep going instead of practice the first 2 pages ad eternum. Besides the Concerto, will I finish this one too?)
Tchaikovsky 1st movement (45’) (I practiced the recap, the parts correspondent to the ones I practiced on the exposition in my last practicing session)
Random
- Measures 238 to 243 (singing and checking, very slow)
- Measures 266 to 273 (singing and checking, very slow)
- Measures 291 to 295 (very slow, intonation and shifts, listening the notes of the double stops separately, but with the fingers in both notes)
- Measures 296 to 299 (shifts very slow)
Tchaikovsky 1st movement, Cadenza (40’)
Random
- Chords in the beginning (bow)
- A major arpeggios (playing with very few bow to learn to save it already with left hand very light with exaggerated mobility, still slow)
- Octave shifts F/D and G#/E in the end of the page
- Shits of the several A/Bb in the end of the Cadenza
Quick look at the beginning of the introduction. So, there is a “piano” written at the very first bar!
September 4th, 2019 - Wednesday
Yesterday I posted something about this Project on social media and then went on to practice. I have to remind myself not to do that again, brings even more anxiety to the practice time and it is harder to focus, making everything slower. Only post after practice!
- Body warm up
Random (40’)
- Open string on staccato
- Vibrato
- Trills half tone
- Major 4 octave scales with correspondent arpeggio (G, Ab, A, Bb)
Tchaikovsky 1st movement (30’)
Random
- Measures 59 and 60 (singing and started to work alla Benedetti)
- Measure 62, 2nd half (found a fingering and practiced slowly, focusing on the shift)
- Measures 97 and 98 (alla Benedetti still slow without metronome just watching left hand mobility)
Tchaikovsky 1st movement (30’)
Random
- Measures 162 to 167 (discovering, tuning and releasing my body between each note)
- Measure 180 (double stops, fingers on both notes but listening only one line at a time)
- Cadenza, chromatic double stops at the end of the first page
September 5th, 2019 - Thursday
Translating the diaries of last week I saw that I should have completed a session of scales in 3 octaves (August 31st). So today I’ll complete those, besides the ones on plan for today.
- Body warm up
- Staccato
Open Strings (25’)
Random
- Bows of 12, 16 and 20 beats at 60bpm
- Staccato of the 3rd movement at 60 bpm, 1 note per beat paying attention to all the physical process involved from before the note until after it
- 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 notes per beat at 60 bpm in the middle of the bow checking sound and body (on the G string, which is harder for me to make a clean sound, I tested a few possibilities: more pronation, less pronation, closer to the frog or far away, more bow or less bow, closer to the bridge or to the fingerboard, straight bow or crooked bow, elbow up or down)
Left hand (40’)
- Random
- Vibrato
- Trills
- Major 3 octave scales with correspondent arpeggios (starting from Eb)
- Minor 4 octave scales with correspondent arpeggios (G, Ab, A and Bb)
Finally I watched the video of my reading of the 3rd movement. The phrase I said when I finished reading it all: “It was weirder to read this movement than the first one.”
Tchaikovsky 1st movement
Random
- Measures 59 and 60 (sang and worked alla Benedetti)
- Measure 62, 2nd half (practiced slowly, focusing on the shift)
- Measures 89 to 96 (singing, checking and tuning with the open string. What a tendency to play sharper!)
- Measures 97 to 100 (alla Benedetti still slow without metronome just checking the left hand mobility)
September 7th, 2019 - Saturday
Something I still didn’t mention, but seems worthy to do so, is the perception I had practicing this Concerto so slow (specially the passages on measures 111 to 118 and 176 to 180 on 1st movement) that the tensions of 10 years ago are allocated not only on the notes themselves, but also in between them. When practicing super slow I could feel that there was a lot of tension-memory in the movements I made between one note and the next, one bowing and the next. For this reason I think those very slow ways of practicing and stopping to feel my own body between the notes, as described in the first practice sessions I made on bars 176 to 180 will be important to the whole Concerto.
This concept of “pause to feel” is something that entered my life through the courses and workshops of Alexander Technique with Eleni Vosniadou. In this Technique the professor who created it, Frederick Matthias Alexander, developed the practice of what is usually called “inhibition”. It consists in stopping before a movement to inhibit the faulty (or tense) way it was happening before, during this stop you can opt for a more conscious and free movement. In a genius insight, prof. Vosniadou introduced us this stop using the name “pause”. When I found out that the tradicional name was “inhibition”, it made a lot of sense to me the change to “pause”. What I interpreted as the reason for this change is that in Portuguese the word “Inhibition” almost means “shame”, “embarrassment”, which evokes the muscular contraction of ashamed, embarrassed people who want to hide or disappear. The word “pause” in Portuguese means only to stop, which doesn't evoke any muscular contraction, on the contrary, the word “pause” is usually associated with rest. During Alexander Technique classes this Pause was used before activities such as walking, sitting, standing, turning around and other day-by-day movements.
I have to clarify that in this Constructive Pause, as called by prof. Vosniadou, even though the body is still, there is an intense activity of our attention which leads to a “being” in the body that is more conscious and light. I was in doubt of how to apply this to the violin practice, so the teacher advised me to use the Pause before bringing the instrument to my neck. And it is great! But as I start practicing I focus on other things such as intonation, sound, rhythm, playing faster, style, articulation, etc. and that initial lightness is lost. How would I bring this easy feeling to the rest of my practice and the rest of the piece?
It was last year, practicing a difficult sequence of chords, that I had this idea: I would practice the between-notes making a Constructive Pause out of it. I also practice stopping in several spots - without changing my position, as if I was frozen in the middle of the music - just to feel my body and let it loosen by itself. And that’s how I’m practicing the 2 passages I mentioned earlier, 1st movement bars 111 to 118 and 176 to 180.
Available time to make noise in the building: 2 and a half hours. If I count the breaks, it’s 2 hours of practice. The plan is to practice some technique, passages of the 1st movement as the other days and, if I have energy after, start to analyze a little deeper the exposition of the 1st movement, with the beautiful full score a dear friend gave me as a gift!
- Body warm up
Random (20’)
- Staccato whole bow
- Staccato of the 3rd movement
- 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 notes per beat at 60bpm, in each string in the middle of the bow (checking the area of the right scapula. But this time I made it starting with up bow in the strong beats, this is mind twisting and this is why it's very good. It was suggested to me by the Canadian violinist and professor Veronique Mathieu to practice scales and I use on the open strings. Strangely it sounds cleaner on the G string when the bow feels a little crooked, frog a little upfront)
Random (1h)
- Vibrato
- Trills
- Double stops in D major (3rds as suggested by Veronique Mathieu in this interview to this blog, and also 6ths and octaves)
Wow, there was a long time I didn’t practice double stops... it was worthy!
Tchaikovsky 1st movement
Random, 2’15" to each mini part (40’)
- Measures 41 and 42 (practicing bow on chords, shifts very slow, intonation. Already caring for the bow distribution by exaggerating the proportions and separating notes on the same bow to mark them well)
- Measures 55 and 56 (playing one note and imagining the next one, the last time I went on to the next 2 bars and saw that there is a lot of tension stored there)
- Measure 62 (imagining the next note and then playing it. The following time I started from the 2nd half of bar 61, the 3rd time I started from the beginning of bar 61. I don’t want to do the bow very far from what it is going to be in the end, so I followed the correct bowings, just stopping the bow to imagine the next note)
- Measures 99 and 100, after adding 97 and 98 (The first times i only did the left hand watching for the mobility of the fingers alla Nicola Benedetti, with the notes playing in my head. The last time I already practiced with the bow the 4 bars, still with exaggerated mobility and consciously light, very slow)
- Measures 114 to 118 (As the previous days, ultra slow watching for intonation, shifts, placing fingers on both notes of the double stops, but playing only one with the bow, first the lower one, than the upper one. The last time I played both together. It’s impressive how this type of work makes this thing improve fast. By this type of work I mean: very attentive to the quality and consciousness of movement and in random practice. I tried to play a little faster and found that it’s in a good path! Of course still far from ready. I need to find out what I want from the bow in this part to integrate this in the practice. Attention for tomorrow: what happens between the end of the arpeggio and the beginning of the double stops?)
And no, I have no energy to analyze anything.
___________________________
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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