When I joined the community orchestra after many years of dormant viola practice, I was expecting it to be, you know, easy. Minuets, fugues, a Gershwin crowd-pleaser, maybe an orchestral adaption of a popular tune, maybe a John Williams musical score. I certainly did not expect this:
Why I don't have time to blog anymore
Even if you have no musical training, I’m sure you can look at that piece of music (The Moldau by Smetana, here) and instinctively sense its difficulty. Look at all that black ink. In classical music, black ink = hard. Let me add that there are 6 more pages that look just as black as this and that the whole shebang takes the orchestra about 16 minutes to play. It very nearly qualifies as cardiovascular exercise. Work those fingers, work that bow, work it, work it.
When I play at home at the fastest tempo I can sustain, it takes me about 21 minutes. My fingers just can’t move that fast. My eyes blur. My bow slides. My viola squeaks in protest. I tell myself that it’s good training, that if I can play this, I can play anything. Yes. Yes. I just need to master this within the next month, in time for the concert, and then I can go professional. Or I’ll wind up like that guy from Shine…
