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Another thing I notice about deep practice is that it's hard to capture the details of a session in writing. There are so many minute observations that happen.

Today I started by warming up in C major, 2 octaves. Each little bit I focused on relaxing something else - face first, then elements of bow hand. I did some in 3 stroke martele, releasing between each stroke.

A little over an hour was dedicated to the Schumann 1st mvmt, those sixteen note runs and the little cello solo. After lots of repetitions in rhythms and times, I did my play through with the recording. Almost there at JEG's tempo, which means it should be a piece of cake at our performance tempo. Not so fast! Pulled out the metronome, which helped me to discover that if I am off balance when I reach that part I still resort to faking it. No problem - that's the discomfort, so practice coming in to it with the metronome until I consistently arrive in balance. This is so much fun.

After a 10 min break, worked out a better fingering for the cello soli in the 2nd mvmt and played with the recording. One more 10 min break, and I just did the play throughs of the 3d and 4th movements. Afterward, I decided on a good fake for a couple of fast string crossing patterns in the 4th movement that I am not going to have time to bring up to speed before the concert - we're talking at least a couple of weeks of motor skills here. Don't worry - it will be better this way.

Finally, spent the last 10 minutes on Breval, beginning with a play through focusing on how relaxed I could keep my bow hand. A few minutes of focused work on the broken chords, then some repetitions of that section. I can't tell you everything I worked on there. It was only 10 minutes, but there were so many small things, just a few reps of each to polish them up.

After practice, I iced my right elbow. I do think I am having a little flare of tendinosis, ironic since the primary impetus is decreasing the amount of tension I hold in my bow hand. I think paradoxically that is leading to more motion at my elbow, plus I am using some really suboptimal equipment this week, along with the longer practice time and technical changes. Looking forward to my usual bow and reevaluating next week. In the mean time, ice is my friend.

End 1230
Total time: 2:22
Total practice ~2 hours