Lesson 29 - Revisiting old exercises

Today we started with where we last left Langin - Half Position and proceeded with both E flat and B flat harmonic minor an octave and a half. These were trickier than normal utilising half positions, shifting, forward and backwards stretch. I am to fully familiarise myself with all the scales and arpeggios available to me up to this point and memorise all the fingerings for each scale so I can proceed with the other positions which will be introduced very, very soon.

There was the slight meander with Sevcik and Bunting which helped reaffirm both left hand and right arm techniques. These exercises should always be revisited now and again to remind the muscle memory of what it has learnt. For example, even just basic up and down bows from the right muscles with a natural and flexible wrist movement is a much harder ability to master than it seems!

We focused a lot on the Concert piece by Couperin today starting with the one I'm finding the hardest - the final movement. Again, the basics are not as solid as they should be which affects the overall performance. Slow, steady with lots of patience and focused planning is the way to go. Concentrate per phrase with lots of preparations (bowing lengths!) for the next! The holidays are coming up which hopefully means I will get a lot more time on my own for such practise.