2/28/2024 0 Comments Cello repertoire graded![]() Part of the problem was that our teachers were no better, and in hindsight seemed a little too focused on who had the most advanced students whose students had played the most challenging repertoire and whose students had the most achievements behind them. This was typical behaviour for young people of our age, and perhaps it was a valuable introduction to the fiercely competitive and political nature of the world we were planning to enter. We all played in the regional and national youth orchestras together, and the annual seating auditions were a tense, unpleasant affair. There were several cellists in my age group at the music school I attended, and the competition between us was stiff to say the least. But I certainly didn’t stop taking on repertoire that required much better chops than I had in those days. I never touched that concerto again except in a few sessions in my practice room many years later, when I would set down a pile of my favourite pieces next to my chair and systematically read through bits and pieces of them. I eventually abandoned the Saint-Saëns Concerto: by the time I got to the third movement even I had to admit defeat. My tempi were all over the place and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the score directions dictated instead by my technical inadequacies, which were numerous and getting worse rather than better with my hours of hacking away at music beyond my reach rather than working on my weaknesses. ![]() ![]() I can honestly say I put a brand new spin on it, and not in a good way! I used eye-wateringly bad fingering patterns throughout – especially in the double-stop passage. I wore him down and he let me take on the Saint-Saëns. 1 the Lalo Concerto both Haydn Concertos and more. I had only been playing the cello for around five years, but had already managed to perform Bruch’s Kol Nidrei (rather messily) at the local Youth Concerto Festival, and was regularly taking repertoire far beyond my ability to my lessons and nagging my teacher to let me play it: the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. In my mid-teens I was fiercely ambitious and deeply dissatisfied at not yet having passed my grade 8 cello exam with distinction. But then I thought about myself at that age – around fifteen. I was about to write an admonishing response, telling him how ridiculous he was to be so obsessed with racing toward a relatively meaningless qualification when he should be focusing on how to become the best he could at expressing himself on his instrument. My eye was caught by a thread entitled something like this: “What is the shortest time you can take to get to grade 8?” At first I was annoyed at the silliness of such a question. I was browsing a forum for classical music students the other day.
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