Teacher holds my hand and wiggles it – the vibrato project progresses.  Looser, looser, looser.  The instrument still wiggles too, a little bit.  But not like it used to.  “Pinkies are the worst,” Teacher says.  I don’t need to agree verbally – the tiny appendage really doesn’t wiggle at all for me.  Well, it might wiggle a little, but the sound coming from my violin does not.

These three Seitz concerto movements each provide a lovely, slower section where vibrato can shine.  Teacher was working with me in yesterday’s lesson on helping bring out the luster in the slower part of my newest piece, the loveliest of these slow sections from any of the movements – the passage is in D Minor, a step down from the D major that carries the rest of the piece along jauntily.

There are five distinct sections of this Seitz 5 Third Movement (in all of my Seitz concerto movements, actually), and I’m playing four of them now.  We still need to go back for the third section.  That one is comprised of a long series of slurs of sixteenth notes, reminiscent of the most difficult section of the first concerto movement I learned.  It will be difficult.  But happily, we’ve already tackled (and I continue to tackle daily) the hardest section of this one – the double stops I’ve been writing about.

Approaching the end of this movement there’s a flurry of sixteenths too – piu mosso, a little more quickly, the music indicates.  Alrighty then.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan