Thursday, November 16, 2006

By popular demand....

I may have inadvertently killed off any interest in my blog by taking so long to write another post. You must forgive me, gentle readers, for my apparent lack of interest in posting on my blog. Unfortunately, the demands of finer art of viola playing have had to come before the pleasures of blogging my dull activities.

The Flint Symphony week was super great, even though I harbor ill feelings toward Schumann Symphony 2. It's not my favorite piece and I've had to play it a number of times. But Enrique gave us a little pre-concert pep talk and told us not to play like we're doing a duty, but like we're doing "a joy." I usually don't actually look at conductors while I'm playing (mostly because they're outside the range of my glasses and I rely on my peripheral vision) but I took the opportunity to actually look at Enrique during the Schumann. He's one of the most musical conductors I've ever played with. Every inch of him expressed the music--he was even wiping away tears during the third movement. People say he cries at every concert and that it makes his mascara run. Whatever.

This week's "joy" is playing the U of M opera, Cosi Fan Tutte. The good news is that I like opera, the music is really beautiful and it's a pretty cool production with only a few scandalous parts. The bad news is that it's three hours of playing quietly and delicately and it turns my entire torso into one big convulsion. The good news is that I'm sitting at audience level and get to see a lot of what happens on stage. The bad news is that I can't be sequestered away in a pit and eat treats and wear purple socks. The good news is that it's over on Sunday and I have an entire free week after that to clean my room.

I know this is a sorry excuse for a post, but all my clever and creative ideas have suddenly left me. Fear not, there will be more posts in the future.


2 comments:

DTR said...

What's the point of the Mozart poster? The "Private Mozart"? Or Mozart in private, i.e., in a little chamber? The illustration is pretty funny.

eileen said...

I'm a huge fan of these pics...

I think I used the Beethoven one on one of my dissertation recital announcements.

Hopefully this won't invite the Berlin Philharmonic to come and arrest me for copyright infringement...

That would be lame.