It's tutti rehearsal today. We started the evening with Rimsky-Korsakov's Easter Festival overture. I finally managed to see some improvements in my playing of that syncopated rhythm section.
During the rehearsal, I felt that I have to revise Grade 5 theory once again, particularly the section on Reiteration and Repeats.
I had thought that a particular bar from the overture should be played eight quavers in a bar. Then, someone from a nearby section asked if it should be played four crotchets in a bar. Not being sure, I hesitantly agreed. But I was right in the first place. After the rehearsals, I went home and checked my own copy of the Grade 5 theory guide book and I found out that the notation indicates that one should play eight quavers in a bar.
Talk about not knowing one's theory well: The trap is that even when one is right, one does not realise, and would end up swaying to do what is actually wrong. It pays to know the fundamentals, I suppose?
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After the break, we practised the 4th, then the 5th and finally, the 1st movement of the Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. The "Storm" section felt so impossible. We were rehearsing that section at a tempo at least twice faster than the tempo used during double bass sectionals. I think I shall practise it on my own at a much slower tempo. I remember a quote that says: "If you can play something slow, it will be difficult to play it fast."
This "Storm "section certainly demands more technical competency than what I have at this point in time. Playing more in the orchestral rehearsal would not help. The issue is not about not being able to play as an ensemble. Instead, having individual lessons or sectionals may better help improve the technical competency by a bit, so that maybe one fine day, while the impossible is still impossible but the storm effect could at least be better achieved.
Anyway, I'll end this post by telling you that I like the 5th movement of the symphony.
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