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I was wondering if anyone had any advice about playing the Ricercar for solo tuba. I played it yesterday on recital and was not pleased with my performance. I felt like it was hard to portray emotion in the piece without being dog-tired at the end. I am playing it for my jury next week. Does anyone have any experience with the piece?

I have played the piece. I'm afraid I haven't much to offer as far as advice. It is a difficult solo to do justice. I would say you need to be prepared to bend the tempo some to allow for breathing. Air is the major issue. Then trying to attach some feeling--possible only if you solve the air problem.

I had the same problems with this piece as well. I usually don't have problems interpretting pieces musically but this one just didn't make sense to me. It's most likely because it's not Bach, where his lines totally make sense and is very smooth.

What I would suggest is try to get lessons with a cello teacher. That's what I did and that really helped me out. A good one anyways. It helped me to figure out how to play the first 4 slooooow whole notes.

-W

There is a very good cello recording of this piece performed by Anner Bylsma on the CD entitled The violoncello in the 17th Century (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 7978-2-RC) if it is still in print (1989).

This music really has little in common with Bach, the two composers only shared about 5 years of life in common.

Listen to this recording if you can, it would probably give you some good stylistic insights

Randy

At the Al Baer master class a few weeks back, he had the student who played it play with a drum set vamp, and it certainly helped him a lot, he really started to grove with it a lot more, so try vamping with it. Good Luck,

Julie