violoncello da spalla – Bach | Music | Conducting | Ensemble Direction | Violoncello da spalla | Viola da spalla | Conducting

Bach Methodology

Since I left the Midwest and moved back to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, I haven’t made music with any period instrumentalists here. In early January this year, I debuted my violoncello da spalla, beautifully built by Dmitry Badiarov, in a concert of Bach cantata BWV 41 with the period instruments, but that was not in Philadelphia— it was in Bloomington, Indiana. I should be networking harder to make early music connections here, indeed, but it isn’t easy for me… It is so true that your networking base and strong connections are developed while you’re in school, and it gets much harder after that. But since I left Bloomington, […]

Selfish self-deprecation

1件のコメント / About myself, Bach, Music / Koji Otsuki

Fairly recently, I had an opportunity to play the prelude from Bach’s cello suite VI on the violoncello da spalla to a small crowd in a modest suburban church. The pressure was almost non-existent; I’d played some cello duets there in the past and I was already familiar with this sanctuary. Not many classically trained musicians and experienced listeners were there. Many of them were just kids…! It was a very good chance to start playing Bach solos on the spalla for someone. I was even going with five full synthetic strings to make some technical elements more forgiving, although my preference to gut strings hadn’t diminished a bit. But

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