Our very first concert of the year was this past week at Kirk in the Hills church in Bloomfield Hills. This was my very first time not only playing there, but ever being inside the huge and beautiful building. Performing here was quite different than at Seaholm High School for a number of reasons. First of all, the "stage" on which we played was level with the audience, and it was very odd to meet the eyes of the audience members when glancing up at Mr. Wolf. Usually, the seats are below the stage with minimal lighting, if any, so contact with the audience is almost impossible during the concert. The close proximity to the audience was a new experience that made the performance all the more intimidating! Second, the acoustics and sound quality in the hall were incredible! They were significantly better than we were used to, and this made it easier to play together. I could hear every single instrument, including parts that I had never heard before, especially in Mars. Because of this, playing together as an orchestra was significantly easier, and we sounded fantastic! Our constant movement as a section also contributed to our success, and my mom even went as far as asking if most orchestras move as much as we did! (This was a compliment of course). Overall, even though we played to the best of our abilities, there are still a few things that we can work on for our next concert.
1) Personally, I need to work on the horribly hard runs.
In Mars, there were several times in which the strings had to play ridiculous runs, as I have previously called them, "crazy fast noodle-esque all kinds of accidentals runs." I could not play every single note up to tempo, so admittedly, I faked most of it. But for our next concert, I will focus on playing more notes (duh) and make sure they are the correct ones!
2) As a (viola) section, we need to work on playing completely together as much as possible, with everyone in the section leading.
In this concert, we played fairly well together, and I was especially impressed that we pulled together the high part in the second movement of the Janácek. However, we can always work on having the entire section lead, as opposed to just the first stand. The front row naturally leads because they are right next to Mr. Wolf, and can pass on his tempo and rhythm to the people behind them by cuing. But it is equally important for the rest of us to lead for the stands behind us, including the basses, because they are even farther away from Mr. Wolf. This will promote not only sectional awareness of each other, but also orchestral awareness of each other.
3) As an orchestra, we need to work on creating greater dynamic contrasts.
We are very good at playing forte, as most orchestras are. We can also play piano very well if we set our minds to it. But at this concert, dynamic contrast was not one of our strong-suits. There were many opportunities for dynamic contrast in Mars, and I think we handled those fairly well. But there were also just as many opportunities in the Janácek that we did not control. Big dynamic contrast is important for entertaining the audience throughout the performance, specifically in slower songs. The application of this would have made our performance one hundred percent perfect.
