Hey everyone!
It’s the end of our second full day here in Coll and it’s been a hugely busy but productive one, full with so much fun!
We began the day with our usual warm-up time, though due to the slightly cloudier weather today, Sophie and Elise opted to remain firmly indoors(!), and after about half an hour of revising our Dvořák Quartet, we were paid a surprise visit by violin tutor Ralph da Souza who had just arrived off the ferry. Spontaneously he decided to hang around and give us a coaching session which lasted the rest of the morning! But it was so wonderful to do such detailed work on a piece which means a lot to us as a quartet, and to really explore all the details of the work. We were all bouncing our way to lunch, for an amazing soup and sandwiches.
After refuelling, we continued our work with Ralph, exploring the Shostakovich which we began yesterday. Personally, I’m really thrilled to be playing this piece – it was one of the first quartets I ever fell in love with, and even though it’s a short one, it’s so full of emotional extremes which bring out the best in the string quartet (as well as having some awesome viola moments!). A cup of tea later, we decided to step away from our core rep for the day and sight read through some of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet 2, before moving back to No. 1, which we’ll be performing on Friday! We had a brief coaching with Jonathan, who guided us on the intricacies of the fourth movement, and helped us find a new energy in all the emotional turmoil of the composition, which we were able to carry on to our informal sharing in the hall that evening.
When the sharing came around, we were greeted by a very pleasant surprise in the Dogoda Quintet’s own performance of the Dvořák American!! It was so much fun to spot our own lines and parts in amongst the quintet arrangement and hear a piece we know so well performed by instruments from other families and gather new ideas from their interpretation. We were then treated to some beautiful Brahms by Shakira and GG: so powerful and meditative!
Then it came to our turn to perform, and all was going super well, when suddenly disaster struck, and in the melancholic B section Elise’s bow was on the floor! By no fault of her own, though – we’d all just been sat a little close together and playing a little too passionately…!
Anyway, we all laughed and decamped to the pub before another amazing dinner at An Cridhe (pesto salmon and risotto!!). In the evening we decided to go for a dip in the sea… or at least most of us! Perhaps Lewis was being the sensible one of the four of us!
Now, post-shower and a cup of tea, we’re all winding down for another action packed day tomorrow, and can’t wait to share it with you!
– Josh 🙂