A Little Ray of Sunshine

Monday, January 30, 2006

What to play?

There is a little string concert that comes at the end of every year. The lady who organizes it is one of the few people who makes me look organized, and she usually calls her potential performers about a week to ten days before the concert. I know my name is on the list.
Last year, I simply did the first movement of the Boccherini B flat Major, because, as I said, she only calls a week to ten days before the concert, and it is one of those peices that does not take too much working up, once you have first learned it. I'd like to do something a little different this year.
I'm considering several different pieces, the Piazolla Tango, or perhaps the Crumb Unaccompanied Sonata, but that is very heavy music, and I'm not sure the audience would enjoy it. It is usually string students and their parents who attend. There are always the PDQ Bach suites, but one almost has to know the orriginals to get the joke. Then there's Schloemo by Bloch, or is it Bruch, I can never remember. I could do a movement of the Dvorak concerto.
Finding an accompanist is always difficult, the lady I had last year could barely manage the music technically, and was woefully unused to playing with solo-type string instruments, as the youngsters she'd accompanied before don't have them. Oh, I know who to call, I'm just not sure how to come up with his fee.
Does anyone have any feedback as to what would be most likely to be appreciated? I'm leaning towards one of the unnacompanied, as that eliminates the accompanist issue entirely, and oh, I forgot, I do have the JS Bach suites.

2 Comments:

  • At 1:01 AM, January 31, 2006, Blogger heidi said…

    See, now all day I've been thinking I wish I would have gotten that Yo Yo Ma cd I was looking at. :) Does PDQ stand for what I think it does?

     
  • At 5:22 PM, January 31, 2006, Blogger BoysMom said…

    PDQ Bach is Peter Shickelie. (sp?) He used to have a show on NPR for years when I was a child, called Shickelie Mix. I think you're fairly close in age to me, so you might have heard it if your folks ever listened to NPR.
    They're fun little pieces, spoofs of the J.S. Bach Six Suites. I'll type up the program notes he included with them on here for ya one of these days.
    And when you have money, you should always invest in 'cello music. Yo-yo Ma is one of the greats, and he's improved vastly as he's slowed down somewhat. His more recent recordings are better than his early.
    All young 'cellists think everything must be played at breakneck speed, which is why I give my students all the Tarentellas and Scherzos I know of. Might as well make use of the repetoire, because if a peice is only marked Allegro my students will still play it Prestisimo.

     

Post a Comment

<< Home