Just got back from Salem tonight after our final concert of this weekend’s classical series with the violin soloist Midori, and the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony. Every so often in the life of a professional musician, there comes a time when one simply “phones it in”. What exactly does this mean, you ask. Well, it is a sort of mental detachment wherein you do all that is required of you in a given performance situation, but you do no more than is necessary to get the job done. In some cases, it might be just slightly less. Alas, I was in this position for all of the concert this evening. I aimed to play everything as required, with special attention to the technical aspects of do so, but was just not able to muster the je ne sais quoi that would make it possible to emote and do something special. Part of it was just the sheer physical effort that playing the Tchaikovsky demands from the violists – it lays so low in the register for so much of the time, and the dynamics are usually either pppp or ffff with little in between of any consequence. On top of this, if you’re just not in the mood, it’s hard to really sink into the grand, expansive melodies with the necessary verve. I know I’m a bad person for playing like this tonight, but I feel like at least I held up my end from a technical standpoint, as did the rest of the orchestra. In the not-so-distant past, Salem performances could be pretty scary affairs…
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