Practiced a bit of cello tonight. I hauled it out and blew the rosin dust off it a couple of weeks ago, in part because I signed up for the June chamber music workshop at CMNC; in part wanting to honour the memory of Mstislav Rostropovich, who passed away recently. I’ve never met or seen him in concert, but my cello teacher Eugene studied with Mstislav; for how long, I don’t know, but Eugene always referred to him fondly as “Slava”, and Rostropovich had evidently left a lasting impression on Eugene. In particular, stressing the importance of the quality of tone, and so Eugene in turn tried to impart this to his students. Hence in my lessons, it was always about being grounded, sinking (but not digging!) into the strings with the bow with the weight of the arm, sometimes with a demonstration involving the weight of another arm on top of your own as you bowed and listening to how the instrument somehow got richer in tone - but not harsh. Then there was the near avoidance of playing near the fingerboard - softer meant slower bow, not light fluffy bow. Vibrato was slow and controlled, never spastic; always to enhance the tone, not as an end to itself. And heaven forbid you play an open string just for convenience’s sake - it’s always about the tone! I don’t know how much of this came from Rostropovich as opposed to Eugene’s other teachers, but still like to think that no matter how far removed Mstislav had a direct influence on how I approach the cello as an instrument.

Which isn’t to say that he’d like to consider me part of his legacy. Far from it. It’s been years since I had cello lessons, and in retrospect I wish I’d studied with Eugene a lot longer. Cello’s very hard for me to pick up after an extended absence. With piano, after an hour or two of practice I feel comfortably competent; cello is battling uphill all the way just to chase that elusive quality of tone when playing a single note. I still have problems even with just the basics: for example, I’m not confident about how I hold the bow, because nowadays after half an hour, my bow hand is cramped and aching. My left hand at least still has permanent calluses, but because I have fat finger pads and a tin ear, at least where the cello is concerned, my intonation is shockingly bad. I’ve never learned the theory of bowing and thus have to rely on markings such as Pierre Fournier’s edition of the Bach suites, which Eugene would be upset at: open strings everywhere, and harmonics for convenience. (I still have some lingering suspicions about Eugene’s bowings though; they’re remarkably similar to Fournier’s..)

The June workshop is two days. I was planning to play cello the first day, and piano the second day with my trio group (we’re still playing together regularly!). Alas I screwed up my schedule and the Ratatouille wrap party’s the first day, so no cello and.. no compelling reason to force me to practice. I should try to keep at it though. My trio is preparing the second movement of the Schubert E flat piano trio; tonight I tried the cello part for the first time and sight read it well enough. So there’s some sort of core competency there, even if I can’t figure out when the E flats are really closer to Es.