These past two weeks have been pretty intense for me on my clarinet playing. I performed mvts 1-3 of Cinco Bocetos in rep class two weeks ago, which went really well. After that I started to focus on learning mvt 3 of Weber concerto #2, and that Cavallini etude (caprice #6, op. 2).
I tried to push speed a lot on scales these two weeks, and I have to say that improvement has been slow. At some point my fingers begin to tense up a lot when I'm trying to play too fast, so I've been slowly increasing the metronome markings each day.
The cavallini etude is really challeging, but fun to play. I've been trying to push the speed there as well by playing the variations at the marked tempo or at least very close to it. I'm not sure why, but I'm having a somewhat difficult time with my G Major arpeggios on the last variation of this. It's gotten better, but they're still not as clean as I'd like them to be.
The Weber still needs a ton of work, but I've managed to get at least the notes learned for a good bit of it. I'd say I'm about 65-75% there as far as the technique goes (counting the crazy-difficult last page). The goal right now is for me to be able to play everyting at about quarter-note= 100, and after that I might push it up to about 112ish since it's a bit more exciting there (that'll probably be a few more weeks). I haven't quite figured out the articulation I want to use through the entire piece yet, but I've got a good idea for the most part.
I also worked on the 2nd mvt of weber a bit, though not as much as mvt 3. I worked on the Debusy Petite Piece the least, but it's also the easiest bit of all the work I had to do, so it warrented that.
It was weird not having a lesson last week, but I'm actually kind of glad since there was so much new material for me to learn. Hopefully the extra time helped you out some as well with the festival set up.
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