Orchestra began two weeks ago, although I missed the first rehearsal due to that rush deadline (and may well miss this week for the same reason, alas). It looks like a fun programme: Mozart’s Paris Symphony, Faure’s Pelleas & Melisande suite, Bizet’s L’Arlesienne suites, Debussy’s Rhapsody for orchestra and clarinet, and no doubt there will be something else. It felt quite good to be back, and still a relief to be in the second to last chair. I missed being up front only a tiny bit.

And this past Saturday was an awesome first cello lesson of the season, for both Sparky and I! I was struck by how much taller he is now when our teacher set him up, verified that he should still use her smallest stool, and they adjusted his end pin. He fits his 1/8 cello perfectly now. I was so thrilled that after a summer of playing only once every week or so (and usually with frustration because nothing went right, woe woe and angst), he remembered everything: he snapped to the right positions when she said “proper posture,” remembered the notes of the last two pieces he worked on, remembered small finicky things he’d struggled with right at the end of the season like the proper spacing between third and fourth fingers and reaching back for his first-finger notes, and a decent bow hold. And his intonation was so close to hers when he played that I got a bit choked up, because I was so proud of him for how he’d internalized it all over the summer away from the instrument, and for going into the beginning of lessons again with a positive, cheerful attitude.

As for my lesson, I do not suck! More than that, there is actual good stuff going on! Perhaps there was some internalization on my own part over the summer as well, or maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that I played the Breval in recital something like fifteen years ago.

Starting book four feels momentous to me. It’s the first Suzuki book with pieces actually written for cello, instead of pieces transcribed from those written for other instruments. It begins with the two-movement Breval cello sonata in C major, written by a cellist as a study piece. I feel like I’m at a different starting point, which I am, but it’s curious to actually recognise it instead of constantly feeling like I’m hitting a wall the way I always do because new/different things are hard. I redid Suzuki book two with my current teacher when I began with her, having done it with my first teacher back in something like 1995, and then slowly worked through book three. I don’t move through the books very quickly, because I do a lot of other stuff too, and orchestra, and I’m at a level where we can wring a lot of subtle finicky things out of a Suzuki piece. But reconnecting with the Breval sonata has the feel of Something Momentous for me. It was my first public recital piece, my first piece of Real Music instead of something from a collection of stuff for cello. (No, that’s not true; I played both minuets from Bach’s first solo cello suite previous to this. But I played those in private recital.) And I’m approaching it from a completely different starting point, too, where my skills have been refined and technique buffed up. My cello stats have benefited from general levelling up as well as specific points being spent to raise my bowing and shifting scores. My understanding of how to make a better sound has developed, and I’m at a wholly different place head-wise.

It felt so odd to sit down and just play something without stressing. I felt confident; I felt capable. I know part of that comes from the fact that I have played it before, but I think a lot of it comes from just being better in general. As I played I noticed things like Hey, I’m not lifting my shoulder any more and Hey, check me out, I’m leading the shift with my elbow. I know I’m in a unique position with this sonata, and it won’t be true of everything in this book, but it will be for about half of it (guess what, those Bach minuets are in this book, too!). The better in general was also noticeable at my first orchestra rehearsal of the year, where I sight read Mozart’s Paris symphony, which I played several years ago (not a decade, but not two years, if you know what I mean) and I didn’t trip over the triplets in the first movement the way I did even after a couple of months of rehearsal the last time. That was pretty telling.

All this, and I managed to internalise what my teacher was demonstrating about scale rhythms in prep for the Breval. I got the bowing patterns right away, my intonation matched hers decently, and I understood her explanation of groupettos and trills right away. (Which has never been true in the past any time I have tried to learn trills previous to Saturday. I have had a block about them forever.) I am hoping it bodes well for this year in cello.

I’m tentatively scheduling one lesson every two weeks for myself for the first month, with the proviso that I may have to drop lessons entirely again if money is awful. If work continues to be good, though, I might be able to have a weekly lesson again, which I would love. Cello is my one thing that gets me out of the house that is just for me, and having to drop it so often last year hurt a lot. Gas is going crazy, too, which makes me suspect I might have to do orchestra every two weeks again because of the price of fuel, and the upcoming massive overhaul of the highways over the next five or more years scares me concerning my ability to get to my music activities. For example, construction closed my regular routes to our lesson on Saturday, so I took the long way around. There was less traffic and no detours, but it was twenty kilometers longer each way. A hundred-kilometer round trip for cello! I can’t even.

But it begins well, and I am optimistic. La.