Daily Archive

My chosen ordeal by instrument.

I did it.  I went to my first piano recital and played not one, not two, but three pieces I have been slaving over for the last couple of months.

You know what?  I completely massacred two of the three.  What I did not do was stop playing, my left hand encountered landmine after landmine in the bass clef, but I just kept on going.  I think the wine had a lot to do with my confidence as I unskillfully added my musical renditions from J.S Bach’s Anna Magdalena’s Notebook: Musette BWV Anh 116, Minuet in G major 114,  and the Minuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115.   It worked though, I kept a rough tempo and ended things with as much as a musical flourish as I am capable of.  Hence, the piano musical WIN!

The performance was another major milestone for me, along with the gruelling group singing lesson that I participated in with my vocal instructor.  You see, I also sing with Intransigentia, she has a beautiful soprano voice that she also happens to be honing with the same vocal instructor.  We sing a haunting duet of Ave Maria that Intransigentia arranged for us.

We sang the duet at the group lesson once through, then our teacher asked Intransigentia to sit down.   I was about to follow her, but was quickly waved back up to the music stand.  The next, oh million years (20 minutes), was spent meticulously going over the fine points of my part, especially the really high parts (my vocal folds were in full revolt by the seventh time the high G# came around).  This was the first time I had sung this song in a small group learning situation; my knees were jelly and my stomach was fluttering about trying to do its bit for chaos theory.

But I survived.  I sang in front of strangers and was corrected (repeatedly) while doing so.  I bent, but I did not break.  The confidence I gained allowed me to perform the next Sunday at a church much better than I could have without this Ogre of a lesson.

Confidence is a massive part of performing music, and it seems that I am gaining some small modicum of it.  It only gets harder from here, but I’m all over that.  :)