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what I would have been playing this week – 1/11/21 edition

I’ve decided to start a new weekly feature – What I Would Have Been Playing This Week (or WWIBPTW) – as I’m starting to re-mourn my loss of orchestral and in-person concert experiences.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 4
Prokofiev: 
Violin Concerto No. 1
Tania León: Stride (Oregon Symphony commission)
Enescu: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1

This would have been a lot of fun. Our concertmaster Sarah Kwak would have been the soloist in the Prokofiev. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony is one that I haven’t done enough to get tired of, and it has some great licks in it for our bassoons! I was also really looking forward to the Tania León commission as well, I’d been hearing great things about it. And the Enescu is a wonderful piece with a really nice viola solo.

3 replies on “what I would have been playing this week – 1/11/21 edition”

Have you really gotten tired of playing some of the other Beethoven symphony’s? I have probably played each of them 100 times and always find something new, compelling, and inspiring in each one of them.

I cannot disagree with your take, however, I still look forward to the even-numbered symphonies more since I’ve probably played them less by a factor of three! (Plus, I have a personal grudge against the 7th just because it is such a slog to get through the last movement.)

Oscar Levant, the great pianist and comedian, was once stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike for speeding. When presented with the ticket he said to the officer do you realize how impossible it is not to speed when you’re listening to the last movement of the Beethoven seventh? It is very taxing to play but incredibly powerful, in my humble opinion.

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