Thursday, May 8, 2014

Reflections on Chamber's concert last week

So I thought the concert went really really well last week. You should all be super proud of what you accomplished.  I hope you gave yourself some kind of small reward for it for you deserve it. I did :) (I treated myself with good food while listening to good music)

I thought the way we opened the program (by starting Prokofiev without waiting fir the applause) was pretty effective and cool. It was a tad faster than I really would've liked it (completely my fault, as I was affected by the adrenaline), but it wouldn't have made any difference to the audience.  Maybe it was a good thing,  for I thought we sounded energetic and impressive.

Bravo to the quintet! You guys pulled it off amazingly despite of the almost impossible circumstance. All the technical stuff were there.
But a small ensemble like that needs to be more intimate, and more personal. In order to achieve that, a group really needs to spend a lot of time playing together.

The Bulgarian Song was awesome. Good energy, good ensemble (despite the unusual meter), first violins nailing the high notes,  great various sound effects through out, and great tempi (that's plural of "tempo", just in case you are confused...), I think the audience was quite impressed by that number!

With the Ravel, I realized that I just can't play solo comfortably in a tight physical space... I need more room... But that's a good thing to realize so I can tell you that, next time you need to take a solo for anything, make sure you have enough physical space around you, so you can be physically comfortable :)  Other than that, the change of pace seemed effective, so that was nice, but I think we need to pay more attention on starting and ending the phrases together. It is way more noticeable when the music is slow.

I do love collaboration of any kind. It just spices things up and give new inspiration and unique experience to all parties involved. I think those Rockit! kids were really cool. I just love their willingness to be involved with things. It is perfectly ok to be impressed by kids your own age. I am positive we impressed them tremendously too. Let's keep this good cycle going!

And yay! to the Brandenburg! I loved your focus during this piece! A little scary moment the day before,  but I figured that it really was just the acoustic of that dance studio that confused us. I noticed that every time we are in that space, our ensemble is weaker. Same thing happens to CYO too. So I might have been a little scared at that rehearsal, but in the end, I decided that it was nothing for us to worry about.  I hope you weren't too scared playing it. I don't think you were. The experience we had the day before was probably a good thing, for it seemed to me that we were all focusing super hard on staying together, which is what we should be doing all the time anyway!  And that piece is always just super fun to play. I'm really happy we are doing it. And we get to do it again in June! Let's shoot for even a higher level of performance then!

Great job, guys.

P.S. And thank you and good job to those who volunteered to do the MC's! 
I really appreciate your willingness to do extra for the good of the group! 

P.P.S. And Bravo! to Chloe and Anna who played every single piece in the whole concert (with Chloe on two different instruments), and double Bravo! to Anna who learned all 7 pieces of the chamber program in just TWO days!! Way to go girls!

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