Accountability time

I am posting about my practice on the double bass for the purpose of accountability.

From about 8.30 p.m., I was practising on the double bass to go through Brahms' Second Symphony at home. I spent about an hour going through all the four movements of the symphony.

I am thankful that I have the Zimmerman edition of the symphony. It has helped a lot, because it has pretty good suggested fingerings. I did not totally follow all the fingerings. I have figured out a few alternative fingerings which I thought were more economical and easier, so I used those instead. To clarify, I did not make much changes to Zimmerman's suggested fingerings, most of the fingerings were very sound. I used most of his suggested fingerings in fact. As for the bowings, some of the bowings were a little awkward but generally most bowings were pretty sound and effective.

I won't have known how to do a crash practice of Brahms' Second Symphony within a short span of a fornight without the Zimmerman edition. I have spent more than a period of more than three months to be sufficiently competent in playing Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, I don't know how realistic it is to master Brahms' Second Symphony within two weeks.

Anyhow, I must thank Zimmerman. His edited score of the symphony came in very handy. So I went to search for information about Oscar Zimmerman. Here is a site with brief description on him:

• http://www.billbentgen.com/bass/players/oscar_zimmerman.htm

Actually I was rather tired by the time I practised the third movement. I started with the first, next the second, then the third movement. Anyway, now I have a clearer idea what to expect for Brahms' Second Symphony. Now, the symphony feels a little more manageable. Proper practice does help.

I ended my practice by playing Saint Saens' The Elephant. Hopefully I can memorise this piece. I felt apologetic that for the past few weeks, I did not spend more than an hour a week practising it. My goodness, I am supposed to play this double bass solo at one of the art museums. Well, I should be glad that this is a Grade 5 exams piece, and is still within my capacity to play.

Tomorrow, I have asked my orchestra's conductor to listen to me play The Elephant with the strings quartet so that I can get some feedback of my playing and help with the transition passage of this work. He actually needn't have to, but I am thankful he has agreed to.