30 min
Day 3. Earliest practice yet, with morning coffee. May be premature, but I am about to declare the practice before Internet tactic a success. Today I spent the entire half hour on that 6 (not 4) measure lick at the end of Shosty 5 3d mvmt. Conductor gave the cello section a pass on it last night, intimating that it will receive (very) close attention next time.



I started warming up with no tempo, one note per bow. When it rapidly became apparent that intonation was a primary issue (I knew that) I set a drone. First G, the starting note, then D, a better choice as much of the shifting occurs around D. As the intonation became better, I added the slurs and increased the tempo.

You can see (though it's a bit fuzzy) that I chose to play this phrase the first line sul D, which meant a good shifting workout over the mid string D harmonic. (I find the finger spacing particularly difficult there, plus the smooth changes in hand shape required to play without excess tension.) A particularly useful exercise was to play the D as a harmonic every time I passed it. While doing that I also discovered that shifting from D to C# on whatever finger I needed led to much better intonation than the uniform shifts to 1, usually on a whole step.

I spent my orchestra rehearsal time last week on fingerings. Unfortunately, it takes me longer than a week to actually remember what the fingerings mean at rehearsal! This week I will be trying to improve my intermediate-term memory with repetition and really focusing on the phrases.