When my duet partner was asked by the teacher to play in the Governor's Award Ceremony, she asked me to play with her, which I eagerly agreed to, as I was always keen on playing the violin in front of an audience. I had experience playing with her for the Christmas Concert once before and enjoyed playing some bars spontaneously with her in our music classes for fun back in IGCSE, so I knew that we would make a good pair right away. Besides, she was the best pianist in my grade and a good friend of mine.
My only worry was that we might not have enough time to practice properly, especially because I was sick for quite a long time due to severe conjunctivitis, and when I did get better, the school decided to go offline due to the high AQI levels. We chose the piece during online school, which took way longer than we expected, as we had to choose one that both of us liked while not being too complicated to finish practicing in less than a month. Since we were to play at the very beginning of the ceremony while the guests entered and had to play for a longer time than usual (approximately 7 minutes), we chose two pieces we planned to play one after the other with 3 seconds in between them.
When we could finally go back to school and had the chance to play together for the first time, we agreed it would be better to have a few days to practice on our own, since neither of us was really used to the piece and it was difficult to sync ourselves to each other's playing. We began practicing with the first piece, but after working on it for a short time, while it would probably sound rich by the time we would play it for the ceremony, we agreed that the other piece would sound more appropriate for the atmosphere of the ceremony. We quickly made the bold decision to scrap the piece and started working on the second one. In the corner of my mind, I think did want to play the other piece as well -even though we ended up not playing it, it was still a nice piece-, but thinking back, it was the right decision. We knew the piece we ended up with better as well because it was a popular Ost 'Always with Me' from the movie 'Spirited Away.' With its slightly lively but reminiscent sound, it felt like the right piece for the performance.
Again, we had some time to practice on our own, which went great, but playing together was, as usual, the more troublesome part, not because we didn't make a good team but because there were more rests and places where the violin would have to kick in after waiting for a few bars while the piano played than we first anticipated. We managed to get the hang of it after we got used to it, though. We couldn't really meet outside of school because we lived at least an hour away from each other, so we focused on perfecting on our own parts during the weekends, and since we had to go to classes, we had to meet during lunch breaks to practice together. I don't think neither of us had a proper lunch for 2 weeks or so while we practiced, since finding empty rooms, getting our instruments ready to play, and getting them in tune already took a while. We didn't have too long to practice anyways, even without lunch, as we had to go to our lockers on time and get the books for our next classes before the bell rang to signal the end of the break.
It was a very busy 2 weeks- I think it was mostly the fact that we didn't have enough time to relax in between classes and barely had time to eat anything that made it harder. Sometimes we brought some fruits to eat in short break, but it was definitely a small portion compared to what we would usually eat for lunch. Unfortunately, it was still only a short few minutes of 10 days that we could play together. After all, we could only go through the whole piece once or twice each day- thrice if we're really lucky. We tried our best to play twice each time after getting our hands warmed up, and while that did happen frequently, it was not an everyday event.
I think it was after our first rehearsal that we really started practicing even more. We were practicing during lunch that day as well, and when we were practicing in the practice room with only the two of us, it sounded alright. It was when we went up for the rehearsal that we suddenly got extremely nervous and started making a lot of mistakes, especially with the timing. It was a part where we had messed up the most at first but had gotten the hang of in the past few days, and I felt really bad that I missed that part. I think it just went downhill from there because our minds got dragged into that big mistake we made and started making smaller ones in terms of speed and tuning. It was a nightmare come true, especially when one of our music teachers told us that this is not what she wants for the ceremony. It was meant to be one of the bigger ceremonies in the school, to celebrate the achievements of graduated IB students. Even more, our English teacher was the person in charge of the whole thing as the deputy IB coordinator. We made too many blunders during the rehearsal, and we were mostly scared that our performance would get canceled before the show. We couldn't let that happen after spending all our school free time working on it.
I knew that I could be a little tense about performances, but it was normally not nearly as bad, and I usually felt better when I actually start playing the violin. I decided that it was probably because of the lack of practice we had, which in turn, made our confidence way lower than it should be. We only had a few days (less than a week) for the actual ceremony, so after realizing the problem, we allocated more time in practicing on our individual parts. Honestly, I didn't have a lot of time to practice at home, and until then, I didn't work on my part as much as I would have liked to. After that rehearsal, however, I gave a little but surely more time, even to practice it at least once or twice more than what I used to, to practice my part. We continued to meet during study hall lessons, lunch breaks, and even short breaks in school to practice together. It definitely sounded way better -I can say that it even sounded good- than we last practiced. I guess the lack of practice and particularly the confidence that was the problem.
In the second and final run-through of the whole ceremony, we were way surer of the sound we could make, and thank goodness, we barely made any mistakes. In fact, the second rehearsal went just as we hoped. I was still a little concerned about the timing since it tended to be more confusing to keep count in the actual performances, but I don't think we made any mistakes on the part after the first rehearsal- I guess that's all I can ask for. The huge improvement we made in such a short time by giving a little more time to practice was almost surprising, really. To not forget the feeling of playing the piece (and maybe because we were very shaken by that first rehearsal- we were somewhat scared that we might make the same mistakes on the show), we continued practicing any chance we got after the second rehearsal as well, especially because we only had 2 or 3 days to be able to practice before the actual ceremony.
Finally, on the day of the Governor's Award Ceremony, we reached the school by 7:25am for our final rehearsal right before the start of the ceremony. Because two other performers had to practice as well, we only had time to play the first half of our piece. After our second rehearsal, we had tweaked the ending a little to make the piece a little bit longer by repeating some bars (when I checked the video of our performance, the whole piece was a little less than 7 minutes in total, which matched our original time for playing the piece better). I'm grateful that my mom came to watch us play so early in the morning and for helping me carry the bags- I had quite a lot to hold, including my heavy school bag, the violin case, and a pair of shoes to change into after the ceremony. She took an amazing video of us while we played, so I still have something to look at when I want to see how we did.
(Please excuse the conversations- this is when everyone is entering and greeting each other)
I knew how hard the teachers worked to organize this event, so we both wanted to do well in it, even more that everyone in our grade would be watching. I wasn't very nervous in the actual performance, probably because we had practiced it a lot and I tried to keep my mind relaxed, telling myself that we'll do a great job. Our duet went pretty well (or so I hope it was- it sounded good to me, and I'm satisfied with it). Sure, I can't say I'm not disappointed about the one mistake I made near the end, and I did feel like I could have done some parts in a better, smoother way, but I didn't let it bother me too much and was able to end the piece as if nothing was wrong. Overall, I think it went well despite the short time we had.
I'm delighted that my friend asked me to be her duet partner. This experience had its ups and downs, but it was certainly more rewarding and exciting than it was tiring, especially after the performance ended. I've played in school events many times before, but it's been a while since I played a duet with my friend, and it was great to see what a good pair we could make once again. I want to say thank you to her for her amazing playing. We did an incredible job, and I couldn't have done it without her.
*(edited) I guess I can't help but think that I could have done a better job every time I listen to it again😅😂
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