Saturday, June 26, 2010

June 24-26

So I FINALLY figured out why I kept getting ice cream in my coffee!! I feel like such a ditz now haha. In the middle of my german lecture we were going over different tastes like sweet, sour, spicy, and examples for each of them. One of the words I learned was "eis" which means "ice cream". So when I ordered what I thought was "iced coffee", I was actually saying in german "eis kaffee" without even knowing it!! I just thought it was the funniest thing ever, but I'm definitely not complaining because its delicious!

Anyways back on track. So these past couple days have been pretty full and I got to see a ton of cool places! One that immediately sticks out to me was the Staadtsoper (state opera house). We had a guided tour of the inside and besides being shocked by the beautiful art on the walls and detailed work of the rooms, I honest to God got to stand in the middle of one of Gustav Mahler's offices! The small piano he played on was also displayed in the room. Mahler used to be the general manager of this opera house so his face was plastered all over the place! After our tour, a friend and I went to the Doblinger Music shop. I swear I have never seen so much sheet music in one room in my life! If my self-control was anything less than great, I probably could have spent about a quarters worth of tuition in that store. They had everything you can think of! In addition to cello solo repertoire there were endless shelves of orchestral scores, chamber music, cello choir ensembles and excerpts. Well I managed to spend less than 100 euros and got some dinner before a performance in the church with the mummies ;) They performed Mozart's Coronation Mass and the acoustics of that church just made it finominal! Literally, the building remained ringing atleast 5 seconds after the choir cut off. I would DIE to be able to play some solo Bach in there :)

Today I also had my first lesson!! Even though I was not off to a good start (being lost AND late), it turned out to be an almost 2 hour lesson and I learned a ton! He just had me play for a while so he could see what he could do to help and then we went through all of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations. He ended up giving me some exercises for left hand positions and we worked alot on bowing techniques in order to throw my sound further into an audiences direction. I had never seen a few of these tricks but they are very handy and make perfect sense!! It still astounds me how detailed and exact you must be with every single motion you make and how the slightest change can make the largest difference. Thats the blessing and curse with playing a stringed instrument. The more you improve, the more you realize how much further you have to go because the details just keep piling up. But on the bright side, you NEVER get bored ;)

Well I'm sure I'm missing some stuff out but I'm tired and thats all I can think of for now :) See ya next time! Auf Wiedersein and Gute Nacht!

:)

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