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.
Hey some great sounds! And fine bow skills.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, 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 ;-)
ReplyDeleteLOL, 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.
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