I’m developing violin calluses on my fingers again – this is a good thing! The first time I picked up my instrument again after last season’s final concert and started practicing again was brutal. I felt like the strings were going to slice through my poor fingers and I kept on grimacing through rehearsal, but I think everybody else was going through the same thing because my stand partner kept on screwing up her face in pain too.
The piece that we’re playing for this December’s concert is a treacherous one. It’s a marvelous piece – all sonorous and dramatic- but it has the violins sawing in the higher registers for basically half the piece. Think of it like this – imagine if you had a long thin steel string, thinner than floss, suspended in the air between two posts and you had to press and hold it down with your bare hands without releasing tension while it vibrated intensely. Imagine if you had to do that repeatedly for 20 minutes.
The E string is not my friend in that piece, but I HAVE BUILT UP RESISTANCE AGAINST YOU NOW.
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