Sunday, December 30, 2007

Fiona's Mignon



Fiona's grandma wanted her to record her "Gavotte from 'Mignon'" over the holidays. For those who don't know the Suzuki violin repertoire, this is a piece students and parents love to hate. It brings together a whole slew of technical skills and introduces a bunch of new ones too, and puts them all together in a piece that seems to go on and on and on. Without, I confess, as much aesthetic merit as one might like.

Fiona has learned this piece pretty quickly and, while it's still difficult for her to play, she can do it with a lot of focus. You can tell this is still difficult for her -- there is a fair bit of tension in her left hand at times and her intonation sometimes suffers as a result. But all in all I think she's doing pretty well with it. Her tone quality and clarity are of course limited by the fact that she's playing on a sixteenth-sized instrument.

We recorded this in four different sections and did a couple of different takes on two of them. That helped me change views and it kept her from getting totally frazzled.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:24 am

    Hey some great sounds! And fine bow skills.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome, Fiona! Take a bow :-) Oh wait, you did. That's a hard song and you're playing it so well. Keep up the good work. I think your 1/16 size violin sounds great. I still have mine (plus my full size that I play all the time, of course, LOL ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOL, I sent this to my mom, and she replied back that she cried her way thru Mignon, which she never did when I played it ;-) I guess she's getting sappy in her old age or something, hee hee.

    ReplyDelete

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