Many of the things I needed to know...

...were covered during my three years at the Shepherd School of Music, during which time I was fortunate to be a student of Kenneth Goldsmith.

Perhaps this entry should have a different title, something like "Back to the drawing board" or "SURELY you have your notes from rep class".    The entry itself comes from having remembered learning Beethoven's Seventh Symphony with Mr. G during my second year of graduate school.

This symphony holds a very special place in my heart:   shortly after I began studying the violin, my mother bought me a gift, that gift being a recording of this work.   While I do not remember the orchestra that was performing on that recording I do remember listening almost every day, finding myself spellbound every time I heard the second movement and trying to understand the third....Flash forward to last weekend, where for the second time this season Beethoven #7 was on a program, that time with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra (the Delaware Symphony Orchestra performed Beethoven #7 in March of this year). 

Ah, the conundrum of being a human being:   I have to admit - humbly, that I found myself incredibly overwhelmed at the first page of this piece and its lines and lines of pianissimo spiccato, and as a human being I must also admit that I do have times during which I find myself unable to pass the overwhelm and really lean into the places that scare me - and yes, pianissimo spiccato scares me.   Or, should I say scared me until I found myself able to take a step both out of the stress and back in time to a series of lessons with Mr. Goldsmith.

This moment of sentimentalia has proved useful in many ways - for one, I am now even more convinced of the adage "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."     As we all began serious audition preparation, we were all assigned repertoire both by the late Raphael Fliegel and our respective teachers, and this was the fifth symphonic assignment that I received from Mr. Goldsmith (the first four having been the symphonies of Johannes Brahms).    Fortunately, at some point last weekend I remembered the HOURS I spent on this first page (albeit the first violin part) during the week between receiving the assignment and having the responsibility of delivering....

....and the memories of the lesson during which I received priceless advice on playing this symphony from Mr. Goldsmith may have saved my skin last weekend....