natesviolin.com » recital

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:14:36 +0000

at a recital. Or a mini-recital. This one is just 30 minutes of music, as requested by the Minnesota Orchestra as part of my audition. So the question becomes: how much can you, or should you, pack into 30 minutes? I have accepted an invitation from a colleague to play through my 30 minutes at his house, in front of other colleagues and students. There’s something about a non-paying audience that ups the ante. Somehow, if people are paying, you can gauge their commitment: “I’m playing well enough to earn their $25!” But this audience will be small and critical. They won’t pay anything, but I will owe them plenty for caring enough to show up.

So what is the worst, if you must prepare for it? Actually, part of practicing is trying to improve your “worst” so that even if it happens, it’s not that bad. I’m playing 4 pieces the day after tomorrow, and I can imagine the worst for 2 of them. It’s the other 2 that worry me. This used to be the way with every piece for me. I would remember the best playthrough and hope that I could recapture it in performance. Now I tend to remember the worst and assume that it will come back to roost. The truth is somewhere in between, most likely halfway in between.

I must thank Akiko, once again, for encouraging me to do this playthrough in the first place. By doing it nearly two weeks before the event in Minneapolis, I give myself a chance to reflect. Plus, as I’ll be recording it, I can listen and judge for myself. As Akiko knows, each performance is followed by a list of things that I “should have done”. Hopefully, after Friday night, I can do those things, and my experience in the Twin Cities will be the better for it.

Beethoven: Sonata No. 10 in G, I
Bach: Sonata No. 3 in C, II: Fuga
Ysaye: Sonata No. 6 in E
Tchaikovsky: Valse-Scherzo

thanks to WFMT

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:53:43 +0000

for putting on a fun show yesterday, and thanks also to the small but dedicated crowd that was there to witness. The Levin studio is a familiar space by now, and the recorded sound is great there as supervised by Chris Willis. They even had food and drink for everyone afterward! Musicians like free food.

If you caught the show on the radio yesterday, you also heard me try not to put my feet in my mouth during interviews between pieces. I’ve been told that I have a good radio voice, and even on occasion a radio face.

listen one, listen all

admin — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:29:43 +0000

to a recital Sunday afternoon, the 24th, at 3 PM central, on WFMT. If you have an internet connection, you can listen live at:

http://www.wfmt.com/main.taf?p=4

The radio program is “Live from Levin Studio” (which used to be Studio 1, but was changed when they remembered they only have 1 studio) and the official billing is “The CSO Soloists Presented by National City– Nathan Cole, violin”. Jim Giles and I will play Preludio from Bach’s E-Major Partita, Brahms Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Wieniawski Scherzo-Tarantella and Debussy-Heifetz Beau Soir.

The format, as I understand, is about 40 minutes of music with some fun talk mixed in. So you’ll hear my impromptu answers to whatever questions are put to me by the host. I did one of these a few years ago, with Jasmine Lin, and at one point the conversation turned to Jasmine’s upcoming composition for violin and vacuum cleaner!

I will post, when I receive it, the recording of last summer’s Wieniawski from the UBS Chamber Festival in Lexington. That was part of the Chamber Olympics, and Alessio and I attempted to “break the 4-minute Scherzo-Tarantella”. This is really not much of a feat, since the average performance is just over 4 minutes anyway. It did take a little going over, however, to get myself used to a tempo a few clicks faster than normal. On Sunday I’ll get to remove those few clicks again. I’ll aim for 4’15″.