Last week, Mr. P lugged his cello and I my viola to our first rehearsal with the local community orchestra. We had been talking about joining this orchestra for over a year, but it only came up at inopportune moments — during the summer hiatus, or right before a performance. The impetus for this timely decision to join after their holiday concert came because we were discussing how I’d amuse myself after Mr. P began his MBA classes on Monday and Tuesday nights.
“I should join that orchestra!” I said, only to discover that the rehearsals were on Wednesday nights, when Mr. P didn’t have class.
“I should join that orchestra with you!” Mr. P said, deciding that a weekly musical respite would have a therapeutic effect on his esprit while undergoing his soul-strangling business coursework.
In preparation for our first rehearsal, I dusted an actual cobweb off of my viola, which had not been seriously touched in over 14 years since my senior year in high school. I spent 20 minutes tuning the strings back to consonance, bought a new bow, dug out some old music, and spent a few tortured hours reminding myself of the notes and sounds. Mr. P, who played cello at a much higher level in high school (his mother was a music teacher) did even less than that. After all, this was a community orchestra that welcomed all string players without auditions. We were picturing some light Mozart pieces, with strong familiar melodies and relaxed bowing. We thought it would be cake.
The rehearsal started off well. The 6 or so other violas welcomed me and I found everyone to be pleasant, including my standmate, a kindly woman about my age. Us violas divvied up the sheet music, the conductor appeared and welcomed everyone, and then the orchestra began sight-reading the five pieces of music for the next concert.
You know that expression “It’s like riding a bike.” There are many things to which this saying can be validly applied. Swimming, for example, or kissing, or singing, or blowing bubblegum, or playing skeeball, or jumping rope, or eating with chopsticks. But on Wednesday night, I discovered that there is one thing that is absolutely nothing like riding a bike, and that is playing the viola.
It didn’t help that all five pieces of music are beyond the level of anything I ever played in high school, especially Bedřich Smetana’s The Moldau, in which the viola part consists of 16 minutes of scale-like sixteenth notes with few patterns and no melodies. “Goodness,” I said after the first run-through, and my standmate assented her agreement that this piece was pure murder despite having played admirably throughout. Me, I was completely lost for an entire page.
Some of this comes from musical disuse, but I’m convinced that even at the height of my youthful viola powers in high school, I could not play the Moldau. I’ve been practicing all weekend, and though I’m improving with the notes, I still can’t play it up to tempo.
Mr. P is finding the cello part as equally challenging, but he’s a little more relaxed about it. His standmate assured him that this is a very “forgiving” orchestra. I hope they are forgiving enough to accept a viola who only plays every other note.
