(You seasoned professionals can skip this if you like, since the experience is ooold news for you.
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Today we had our end-of-term recital at the music school I attend. I was nervous before we started, especially since I knew my teacher would be late so we would not have time to rehearse before, and I had also invited a colleague from work.
What did I play? Two songs from lesson books, "Visa vid vindens ängar" and "Greensleeves". (The first one is a Swedish folk song.) The first one was with piano accompaniment, and the second a duet with my teacher. I also played with the schools ensemble. The ensemble piece was an arrangement of Haydn’s water music, part 15 and 17 (trio), and a summer song.
I arrived one hour early since we wanted a final rehearsal with the ensemble. We made some errors we never used to do, played forte with jazzy rhythm instead of piano dolce, forgot repeats, and I lost where I was in the music... Never mind, there was no audience yet.
When we had finished rehearsing, everyone else, including family and friends, had arrived. The venue was cosy, and people were sitting around small tables helping themselves to coffee, sandwiches, cake, and other refreshments. There were mostly adults playing, since kids usually go to the municipal school. Everyone played beautifully, and I enjoyed listening to the fellow students I knew. We flutists were anxiously waiting to see if our teacher would make it on time. (She did of course.) The audience was really polite and listened to the music quietly and with great interest, even though the refreshments.
Finally it was my turn. For the solo songs, I found it difficult to keep the rhythm correct when practicing. But apparently I had been practising enough (always with metronome or cd) because especially Greensleeves went really well! I played the first song ok, but not as musical and with a poorer tone as I know I can play it. The reason was, I assume, that as I started playing I noticed I had forgot to tune with the piano and also started at a too slow tempo. I was not much out of tune, and managed to correct it better than I expected, so almost through the song it started to come together and I could relax more and focus on the playing. Greensleves went really well, and I am sure it is because I found it so difficult before and therefore spent huge amounts of time trying to get the rhythm correct and flowing when practising.
The ensemble pieces went really beautifully. No one messed up badly, and we started and ended together.
Actually, we stayed together really nicely, and it was so great to hear the moments when all parts played so well that the music melted (blended?) together and nothing was “sticking out”. I loved the feeling when we hit the last note, and realised we actually managed to pull it off. (The big smile on the conductor/leader’s face, and the nice applauses, were of course fun too!) I am also impressed that the audience did not clap between sections, since I would not expect them to be concert goers and much of the other music was not classical.
.JPG)
