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How often do you play with a pianist or other instrumentalists?
Take a moment and consider how many hours you spend in one month playing with others, as compared to the
number of hours you spend practicing by yourself.
Is that ratio something like 1 to 2? 1 to 5? 1 to 20? Zero to 20?
And how much of the music you’re playing was composed for cello and piano? For two cellos?
String quartet or strings with piano? Orchestra? Cello and orchestra? The truth is that a very small percentage of what we play as
cellists was actually composed for cello alone. And these pieces fall mostly into a few genres: unaccompanied Bach, etudes/exercises,
solo sonatas. If you’re playing any other sonata, a concerto, or a piece of chamber music, then your part is designed to fit
into the greater framework of the entire instrumentation. Does this seem obvious?
If this is all true (even obvious) then what kind of difference should there be between how we
play when it’s Cello Solo compared to the Cello solo part in a concerto or the cello part in chamber music?
Read the full article here...
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