This week has hit me like a bus. I have been trying at every opportunity to get to play, but when I practice, I feel like I need to warm up and get my fingers going, otherwise I can’t play anything faster than a sixteenth note. That has been one of my struggles this week. The CPE concerto has a section where there are 32nd note runs and it is super tough to keep my fingers and bow strokes in sync, it sounds super choppy. The Bach suites are getting somewhat better though, I have tried out a few different ones, and it’s always super cool when I haven’t played one in a while because all the suites and their movements are so different. These are also super great because I can try out playing them in different ways to see how they sound. I like how the different movements in a suite contest each other so much, but still connect in a way. I’ll put a video of me trying it below. This piece felt weird to play for me. It’s one of the pieces I played during my UBC audition and I still get nervous and shaky when I play it. I can still picture myself in the performance hall at UBC with the faculty heads 13 rows away from me sitting in the dark. I was about 8 minutes into the first movement when I started sweating and shaking profusely and because of that I missed my entrance from a long rest and when I tried to start again that’s when I heard the three claps, from the head of the cello department, echo through the room. I want to be able to play it well, and it’s a super interesting piece. I have a small clip of it I can play below, but I want to sort of beat this piece. I have music so I can follow along (you don’t get to bring music in for auditions, so you have to play the piece from memory) and it should make it easier.