Recitals

My first J.S. Bach song was found somewhere in the Suzuki lesson compendium, at around 8 years old. In our program, we often performed for fellow students in our community. We were in varying stages of learning. I remember sitting, still stiff and a bit flushed from my recital nerves of a few minutes prior. Now that our Suzuki Book 3 group was finished, it was time for the more advanced students to play. I remember the teacher walking up to the front, instrument in hand to join a violinist in a long dress. She might have been in 5^th or 6^th grade but she seemed like a grown up to me; tall and capable. That was the day I began to admire her playing. I still listen to it in my head sometimes, when I hope to play better.

She and our teacher started to play a duet that excited and moved me. It was fast but not too fast. Complicated but fun. It was melodic throughout the runs, not just scale and fills for show. It was intelligent but not confined to the cerebral. It was a unification of the heart-mind. The song was for two violins and piano, but I remember the sleepy beige music room ringing with the full sound of countless strings and a steady, singing rhythm. The sound was inside me and those hollow wood instrument bodies, at the same time. I already loved playing the violin but, this made me yearn to improve, to connect with those notes physically. I would play that song someday. And I would play it in this way, inside my violin and inside the hearts of the audience at the same time. We would share this echoing resonance of J.S. Bach and feel its harmonies together.   I remember unclamping my hands from the sides of my cold metal folding chair after she was done, the player in the long dress. I remember walking past her to put my chair away on the wall, and still feeling that aura of what she had played and created, wafting around her. My heart skipped a beat. My mom wanted to leave after the next performance. I wanted to stay but, being a kid I lacked agency. I spent the car ride home quietly imploding on layers and layers of my first ideas (almost a nostalgia even) of Bach’s music, his meaning, and his shared feeling, his musical artistry. I didn’t know who he was, but in that moment, I felt I recognized his understanding of violin, or was starting to; and I knew I would learn more.