Wednesday, March 01, 2023

back to Suzuki school

Four months into the adventure sparked by my aunt's ancient violin, I feel I'm ready to use more interesting fingerings than the 1-2-3 that will get you through most folk tunes. So I was glad to discover vols 2 and 3 of Suzuki violin school at Oxfam. There is a big overlap in the pieces used at the same stage in the cello school, so I have much of the music in my head already (a fifth down, as they are arranged to fit easily on the respective instruments).

I started with Boccherini's very famous minuet and Dvorak's humoresque (Passengers will please refrain ...). Both great fun to play and not actually too hard if you have the tune in your head. As I hoped, Suzuki includes fingerings to alert me to the places where it makes sense to depart from the standard (folk) fingering. Watch this space.

The editions date from 1970 and lack the piano part but I don't mind. Might go back for vol 4, but I didn't recognise any of the pieces, that may be the point where violin and cello editions go different ways, following the specific repertoire of each instrument. Note also that the editions are A4 format - they date from before the availability of photocopying, to which publishers responded by printing larger formats not so easily copied.

PS speaking of Dvorak, it just dawned on me (after this entry went live) that I have a printout of his sonatina Op 100, which I played on the flute back in 2017. Now that's a nice little project ...

Update 10.3. A video of this month's Slow Session has appeared here, where you can see me fiddling ...

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