Lesson 57 - Marcello : Baroque or Romantic?

I had to reschedule this week's lesson due to unforseen circumstances. My dear old cat has been rather (very) poorly for the past few weeks now and it has definitely taken a real toil on any sort of productivity or just basic functionality really. And there I thought I was made of stone.

In any case, Deryn has been tremendously understanding throughout and this has moderately kept me encouraged despite not really wanting to even attend lessons much less practise. Still, I've kept at it as much as I could and once you get the ball rolling, hours would have gone past. However, I have had to reduce my weekly lessons to once a fortnight but hopefully, progress will not be affected.

I've been focusing solely on strengthening the left hand the past week, utilising the Feuillard exercises specifically. Such simple repetitive exercises daily and even my extra long third finger no longer fears the fingerboard as much; when previously it always lands too sharp, it now knows it's place somewhat. I suppose that is the entire purpose of all these monotonous exercises - to be so familiar with the fingerboard that all manners of fingering patterns and positions does not make one panic and head for the hills. Those hills I know so well!

And so we played through those exercises in class, slurring 12 semiquavers and increasing the tempo for each string. Like a tongue twister, it becomes fun when you grasp it.

Finally, Deryn decides I play the Marcello Sonata with her. Squee! We haven't looked at the sonata for a while now as it was decided that I played some supplementary exercises for it instead. It has paid of in leaps and bounds; Deryn says she could definitely hear my 'stamp' in the piece now.

We rounded off the class by discussing about the importance of rubato, phrasing and performing accordingly, the various ways to approach the piece; be it with vibrato in a Romantic sense or without vibrato in the pure Baroque sense and which 'speaks' to me more. I like both so will be trying out both approaches as I do believe the one piece sounds entirely different when played in either way.

Before we ended the class, Deryn brought to my attention the few times I played glissando during the Marcello piece and if was an artistic decision or a technical blemish to which I replied both; I knew which bits were technical blemishes and the exact bar of notes I experimented "artistically". Apart from minimising the audible shifts, we both decided that glissando is a technique that will not make an appearance in this sonata!

Ah, glissando. When applied to the wrong things, you sound absolutely appalling (think Bach Air played Kenny G style). This was when Deryn brought up her horrific memories of "Hooked on Classics" played by her neighbours at the loudest setting on a daily basis. Yikes!



I can somewhat relate having lived in a place and time when Vanessa Mae was the most requested artist on the radio!