horrors of maiden performances

It’s a well established fact that the first performance of any piece, no matter how simple or complex, is one of the most terrifying things that a performer can do.  I’m not necessarily talking about a premiere, just the first time that one adds a piece to one’s performing repertoire.

I’m working on the Bartók Viola Concerto for a faculty concert at this year’s Max Aronoff Viola Institute (20th Anniversary Edition).  I’ve worked on the Bartók for years – every violist has, at one point or another, studied the piece.  And I’ve played the first three pages of it in quite a few orchestral auditions.  However, I’ve never performed the piece, either whole or in part, in public (auditions don’t count).  I liken the process to riding my bike up a long, gradual climb (maybe 2% grade):

and then at the end coming to something akin to the famous Alpe d’ Huez (avg. grade of 8%):

Rehearsing with pianist Cary Lewis here in town has been a tremendous help.  Practicing with a metronome can only do so much, having a living musician playing the accompaniment is so much more useful, and difficult.  It’s easy to get distracted by listening to the music of the orchestral part, whereas the click/beep of the metronome just goes into one’s unconscious and fades into the background.

I took the big step of recording my run-through with Cary yesterday, and spent my pre-bedtime hour listening to it last night.  There is nothing quite so nakedly appalling as listening to one’s self play, except maybe to watch a video of same.  But it hones one in on exactly where things need to be touched up (either just a bit, or completely reworked) in a way that nothing short of having a teacher in the room will do.

It’s also easy, as an orchestral player, to adopt some pretty stupid habits in one’s playing that one might never notice until a solo work is being prepared.  Your ear just gets used to what you do, and until you are forced to listen to it, you assume that everything is just going swimmingly.  For me, it’s my use of vibrato.  I stop vibrating in places where it really isn’t musically appropriate, and that’s pretty easy to fix, once I’m aware of it.  Also, in orchestral playing, there might be a few bars here and there that are quite exposed, and even more rare are actual solo passages (especially for the #2 player), and a concerto is nothing BUT solo passages, all of which are difficult by design (concertos are meant to show off every aspect of the player’s technique and the instrument’s range), and that is always something to get used to as well.

So, I’ve got ten days to go until the pedal hits the metal – wish me luck!