Penderecki Viola Cadenza: Week 2

Hi everyone! I wasn’t able to practice the Viola Cadenza quite as much as I did the first week, but I was able to work through the third page! Only one more page left!

Video

I took a video of myself playing through the first three pages, but it was a little too rough for me to feel comfortable sharing it. I’m sure once I get a little further and more polished, I’ll share a video of myself playing with sound. For now, I took a time lapse of 30 minutes worth of my practice.

Notes from my video:

• I should be playing with flat hair. This has become a bad habit of mine, and I know playing with flat hair as opposed to only some of the hair will give me a much fuller sound.
• Everything needs to be a lot more dramatic. I know I’m mostly just focusing on learning the notes and intonation right now, but I need to start practicing it the way I want it to sound. It’ll help pull everything together.
• I know a bunch of things were out of tune (this was in the video I didn’t share that does have sound,) but my left hand looks really good and I’m putting my fingers down deliberately.
• Side note – taking a video on your phone of yourself practicing will help you not touch your phone! I was so focused the whole 30 minutes I spent practicing while taking this time lapse. I know some people put their phones on do not disturb or airplane mode, but when I try that I always end up touching it anyway to check the time and just to distract myself when I don’t want to practice harder sections.

Challenges

I’m having trouble staying quiet enough while still phrasing in the beginning of the piece. I have to figure out how to stay in control of the dynamic range and keep everything in piano until the crescendo in the second line, and even then, I need to remember not to get too loud too fast.

Another challenge I’ve encountered is that I’m unable to find any recordings that I really enjoy. I thought I found one that I liked this week, but upon another listen I realized that I really don’t like it. It’s not that I can’t appreciate what they’re doing, but I disagree with a lot of the things they do in terms of phrasing and articulation, and therefore it’s hard for me to listen to these recordings as guides. I’m still listening around and trying to find something I will actually like listening to.

One last thing – I ordered the Schott edition of the Cadenza, but it’s laid out differently from their old edition. This new edition I bought has the first two pages in one spread, a page turn, and then the last two pages in one spread. The old edition, which I intended to buy, has fold-out pages so all four pages are right there with no pages turns. I really don’t know why they changed the layout in the new edition.

Breakthroughs

At the beginning of week 2, I was still struggling to hear major sevenths. I kept trying to play either minor sevenths or octaves. Part of the problem was learning the hand shape, and the other part was learning to hear it. I looked for songs that feature major sevenths, but all I could find was Take On Me by a-ha. I’m playing and hearing major sevenths much better, but now I’m really tired of Take On Me. If anyone knows any other songs that feature major sevenths, please let me know!