Arpeggione Senior: Patrick (16)

Arpeggione Senior:  August 2021

Due to the immense generosity of the Joan Dickson Chamber Music Fund, I was able to attend the thrilling viola course Arpeggione. Over the course of the week, I got the opportunity to lead a group of seven violas in a chamber group playing a piece called Blues Fantasy by Eduard Putz. This was a fantastic experience since, as violists, you don’t often get the opportunity to lead chamber groups, so the experience I gained from it, I can then use in more ‘normal’ chamber music configurations playing Mozart and Haydn.

As well as this, I got to play the concerto piece, Weber’s Andante e Rondo Ungarese, which was a great opportunity to develop my playing from a soloist’s point of view but also to continue to work on my chamber music skills more soloistically. The main pointer I gained is that I performed not enough as a soloist and too much as if it was one enormous quartet.

As well as these fantastic experiences, I also performed in a masterclass in which I gained some excellent advice from Martin Outram which was extremely beneficial. Outside of playing music, I enjoyed playing table tennis as well as a bit of football and badminton.

Again, enormous thanks to the generosity of the JDCMF for enabling me to attend this fabulous course.

Patrick (16)  -  viola