I’ve come a long way since the end of Book Two, but I basically left the Boccherini Minuet, the book’s finale, in the dust sometime in the middle of Book Three.  For whatever reason I haven’t been as motivated to keep it active as I have with some of the other Suzuki pieces.  Because I can’t practice them all every day, I’ve have to make choices about which pieces to keep up, so I’ve picked a few that work on critical skills that are also just tunes I love.  But I realized that this Minuet falls into that category.   In addition to being somewhat difficult, especially to play with the accompaniment track, I have loved the music since I was a child.

So yesterday after all my formal practice was done I found myself dragging out Book Two and trying to work up the Boccherini again.  I was surprised at the degree to which I had to work to resurrect it.  It took a good deal of effort; my memory failed me and I relied on the music heavily for the first couple of run-throughs.  It’s not that I didn’t remember anything, but there were a great many spots where I struggled with fingering and technique and knowing which note to play for the larger intervals, (the piece is positively overflowing with big intervals).

As I played and my memory returned, I also identified a couple of spots in the music where I know that when I did have it up to snuff and could play it from memory I had not stabilized on playing them as the book indicated.  That’s totally fine – there are some choices to make as you go along, and the fingerings assigned in Suzuki aren’t necessarily always the “correct” way.  It’s interesting to see where that happens, though, because in general we Suzuki Kids do try to play as indicated.

Overall, I’m definitely in a better place to be doing the Boccherini justice at this point in my playing than I was when I learned it the first time – I think I might keep it in my daily repertoire for a while and see how it goes.  Perhaps today I’ll even drag out my old nemesis – the accompaniment track –  and see what happens.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan