Suzuki Music Academy of Hong Kong

"Music Exists for the purpose of growing an admirable heart" ~Shinichi Suzuki

Reflections of the Performers: Sander Day and Ayden Siu Book 4 & 5 Violin Recital

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Ayden and Sander performed their Book 4 & 5 recital together. Quite an accomplishment, as the level of responsibility for this recital is quite a bit more than students have had previously! Please enjoy their reflections on the experience.

~from Ayden

This book 4 & 5 recital is very different from all my past recitals. It not only encompasses two Suzuki books, but also student-led responsibility. We are responsible for working on all joint pieces preparation and making plan independently without parent involvement. I had to organise multiple practice times together with Sander for our joint pieces before joint lessons. During this process, we encountered challenges, like how our schedules conflicted and how to make plans on individual practice for areas like tempo, dynamics changes etc. This is especially evident in Bach Double where we needed to pass the melody back and forth, and where we had to phrase different parts together which was difficult to work on.

Reflecting on the book recital, as I had dedicated extra time to commiting quality practice to my solo pieces according to Ms Diane’s comments from lessons. I felt the solo pieces, although at the start had a lot to work on, were not very challenging during the recital. One of my favourite moments during the book recital was having the opportunity to perform the entire Vivaldi Concerto. This became my most memorable solo piece. The Vivaldi Concerto starts from Allegro, to Largo back to Allegro. This big change in mood required me to spend enough time to change the atmosphere before starting. I thought I have done it smoothly during the book recital. Furthermore, I also thought that I had used vibrato and created dynamic contrast well throughout to help set the atmosphere. 

Overall, I enjoyed the process of collaborating with Sander as a new student-led experience and felt our work and dedication towards performing during the recital to be accomplishing and successful.

~from Sander

Looking back on the process as a whole, I have a few large takeaways, a few of which are positive, and a few of which are areas of improvement. 

Firstly, in terms of large ideas, I think that a positive of the recital was how well not only Ayden and I prepared (grew to the occasion to efficiently and effectively do so) and performed the pieces sounding in most cases together. In terms of a large area of improvement that I would note, I think that in many of the pieces, the parts that had previously come out as areas for improvements sounded generally good, however, parts that had not had as much attention seemingly may have had mistakes in them while playing them during the recital, even if they had not in previous practicing.

Moving on into individual piece feedback, going chronologically, I felt that Country Dance was good in terms of the energy that I was able to bring out and character. Overall it felt solid, except for the rhythm section where I kept going back and forth (I suppose that is simply because I was not confident enough with it at the time). 

Next, in terms of Seitz (5.3), the piece overall felt good. I had a special focus on dynamics and character at the beginning, and I felt the articulation of the double stops was sound, however, I did notice that the tempo was not always consistent (i.e. the tempo did not get back to a tempo). 

Further, on Vivaldi (all movements), (similar to what we discussed in lesson) the parts of the piece that we focused on for significant amounts of time no matter if they were challenging or not, seemed to go well. This may have been slightly due to tempo shifts (similar to Seitz). As well, I knew immediately when I started the third movement that I had forgotten to leave the breath in between, even though it had been something we and myself had practiced and tried to internalize. 

Lastly, for German Dance my only notable comment on the piece was that it felt it was going well until I started to, I will say, overthink the fingering, and then it led to the piece sounding partially sloppy and incoherent.

Reflections of the Performers: Isabel & Chloe Book 2 Recital

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Chloe and Isabel gave their Book 2 Recital on the last Saturday of our Spring Term! Here are their reflections on the experience:

~from Chloe

    I was really excited when I heard my partner was Isabel, since we did our Book 1 Recital together too!
        Isabel and I were both really nervous in the beginning, since there were 5 guests who came to watch, and it was a lot more people than in the dress rehearsal. Consequently, during the first piece—Happy Farmer, Isabel forgot that I was leading, and led the bow, and gave the cue. So of course I was really confused, and messed up the beginning. Fortunately, we somehow managed to start again, with me giving the cue, and the rest of the piece went really well. 
        Our other two joint pieces—Twinkles and Musette was really good. In Twinkles, we both remembered to have eye contact after every section. In Musette, we didn’t forget to do the dynamics and phrasing we were working on the last few weeks. The only thing I think we could have done was a bigger retard and diminuendo in the end.
        I think part of why the joint pieces were really great, is because we practiced them over and over during all the joint lessons, dress rehearsal, and our practice-playdate. Yup! On June 10, Isabel went over to my place and we practiced all our joint pieces with our concert dress on! After 45 minutes of practice, we decided that we were fine, and started to play games! She even stayed for lunch! 
        Anyways, back to the recital. Slowly but surely, I got more confident throughout the performance. I think my best piece that day was Two Grenadiers, since I used my whole bow, did the crescendo, and used my elbow for the up bows, to create a grand forte sound. I also really liked Chorus from “Judas Maccabaeus”, because I used my thumb and elbow together to create beautiful tone. In Boccherini Minuet, I did a lot of dynamics in the C, D, and E sections, but I could definitely make the trills sound clearer. In Hunters Chorus and Gossec Gavotte, my eighth and sixteenth notes were kind of mushed together. I really liked Gavotte from Mignon’s pizzicato ending as well. I did elbow circles, and pulled the strings sideways. 
        After the recital, we had a lot of snacks, drinks, and candy, at the reception. Everyone was just chatting, laughing, and eating. 
        Lastly, I want to thank all the people who have helped me make this recital happen. Ms. Diane, for teaching me all the pieces I performed. Ms. Marie Ann, for organizing everything. My family, for supporting me along. Ms. Sonomi, for collaborating with me. Isabel, for being a great friend and partner. And Isabel’s parents, for bringing the amazing food!
        All in all, the whole recital was a fun and enjoyable experience, and I look forward to my future Book 3 Recital too!

~from Isabel

I think that my book recital with Chloe was successful because we worked well and we could identify what problems there were in our joint pieces and we practised this more when Chloe invited me over to her house and we mostly practised Musette because we needed to practise being in sync. After that, we played with Chloe’s little sister and ate lunch. I think this was a very fun experience and I would like to do another recital with Chloe.

Reflections from the performers: Emma & Andrew Book 2 violin recital

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~ from Andrew

This recital did not go well in the preparation. I had trouble getting my violin ready in time for the practice before the recital; I even forgot to wear the formal clothes and had to re-wear them after I still wore my bright-colored shirt inside my recital uniform. I should have thought about how the clothes would be visible and distract the audience and show that I did not care about the recital, instead just wanting to get over with it.

         Then there was the group practice before the recital. We started great by reviewing the joint pieces together and after playing through the first two pieces, we poorly decided to practice our solos, which was not an instruction you gave us. I really should have listened because later on in the recital I had some trouble paying attention to the tone and listening to my partner.

         Lastly, there is the recital. I think our performance improved as the recital went on. I enjoyed how I listened to my sound to improve my tone. But for me there were some choke points in a few pieces; Ignored ones led to some problems later on as the same section repeated. Sometimes during the joint lessons, we could not remember the practice assignments and we had to review them again, which took a long time.

         The dress rehearsal was troubling for us to play with a good tone. So then I spent lots of time at home practicing tone and correct position so then the recital could go well.  Next recital I should prepare more as the pieces got more advanced as well and mistakes get harder to avoid.

~from Emma

I want to say thankyou to Ms. Diane, my violin teacher, for helping me through this recital.

I liked how I got to play harmony in Musette. Over all the years I have played the violin, the only time I had formally played harmony was for twinkle, so I was really happy when I found out I got to play harmony in Musutte. 

2 months to prepare for a recital seems like a lot at first, that’s what I thought at first. I made a big mistake, I didn’t practice because I had around 2 months to prepare, and pushed everything till the last minute. The few days before my recital, I had to sleep very late just to make up for the time I had lost.

During the recital I felt really nervous, I had spent enough time for people to think it is an average recital. But deep down, I know I could’ve done much better.

This was the busiest time of my life, I had to juggle practicing the violin, school work and practicing the piano for the last few weeks. It was supposed to be less busy, but I didn’t use my time well, and suffered greatly from it. But from this recital I learned a great lesson to never waste your time as you can never relive a moment of your life.

“Time is free, but it is priceless. You can’t own it, but you can spend it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.” – Harvey MacKay

When I have my book 3 recital, I should plan out my time better, so I can have more time to rest, and still have enough time to practice my violin.

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Reflections from the Performer: Gwen-Sofia Lam Book 3 Piano Recital

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~from Gwen-Sofia

I think my book to recital was fun but I wished it could be slightly longer. I felt nervous at the start when I saw the number of people watching me (It was DOUBLE the amount of people I thought there would be, and it made the large room feel like a tiny room.), but I relaxed a bit after I played the first piece. I think I could have improved my performance by focusing more on all the songs, especially the graduation songs, but overall i thought it was good. I’m very sad that this was my last book recital at Suzuki and I will miss Suzuki very much! I know I have gained an amazing experience doing these recitals and I want to thank all the Suzuki staff for making these recitals happen for me.

Reflections from the Performers: Lincoln & Miles ~ Book 2 Violin Recital

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Miles and Lincoln were excited to welcome the largest in person audience to a Book Recital since before COVID! They have some thoughts to share about their experience together:

~from Lincoln

I believe that the recital was quite successful. One of the reasons is that there were no major mistakes and I firmly believe both me and Miles played beautiful music that allowed the massive audience to clap loudly. In Twinkle, I think I should have paid a little more attention to Miles as I was completely focused on myself. I would like to thank you for helping me develop my music and Ms Sonomi for being piano accompaniment. I think that I have prepared a lot for my recital in the 20 mins of time to practise. I think that I should have practised more pieces  rather than just a few. I believe my playing with Miles of Musette has significantly improved. We were together more and we played it better than the last time. I firmly believe that overall, the recital was a success, however had some flaws such as the twinkle where I accidentally played theme instead of harmony for a few seconds in variation E. 

~from Miles

My recital went well, and I am proud of how I did. I think I worked well with my partner and have done good ques for both Ms.Sonomi and my partner while leading. Overall I did much better than last time, and hope all future recitals are as good as this. The main concerns I had when I was told the recitals’s date was me forgetting the forms of the pieces, but after getting used to the pieces again, I found the forms not too difficult. The joint lessons also helped a lot as we focused a lot on ques and how to lead, which neither me or my teammate really did well before the joint lessons.

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