By Hanna Wang
I was eight years old when my mom first shepherded me into The Rivers School for violin lessons, the weighty grip of my violin case in my tiny hands, clutching rumpled sheet music. The front hall, wide and spacious, welcoming in its warm, bright lighting and antique staircase, was reminiscent of another era.
As I walked down the hall, music drifted from behind closed practice room doors, young musicians furiously playing with intense concentration. I soon met my teacher for my first of many weekly hour-long lessons, and thus began my journey in interpreting the black notes dotting the page, fixing my bow hold, and practicing techniques from legato to detaché.
I’m not sure when there was no longer a distinction between me and my violin; it molded to my arm as formative as any part of me. Nothing truly meaningful disregards time; I poured many hours into painstaking practice.
One day, four years later, I had just finished a grueling yet eye-opening lesson for the overture to Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville. For the first time, my playing had moved from foundation-building to phrasing musicality, and I realized my violin could become a vessel of emotive expression. It was cathartic to pour my heart into the music.
After leaving my lesson, I entered a practice room to cram a bit more muscle memory into my fingers before the workshop for a recital audition an hour later. As I gingerly set my violin case on the floor and pulled up the music stand to eye-level, I felt a sense of tranquility and purpose, anticipation. In the silence, I once again noticed the melodies drifting from adjacent practice rooms, different textures from bassoon to cello mixing in the air. Major and minor keys juxtaposed into a blended ambience; pauses terminated mistakes, and fragments were repeated until impeccable. At that moment, I realized that there was no sound more beautiful than these fleeting sounds, intersecting mediocrity and transcendence, diligence and musicality, human fallacy and perfection.
So I lifted my violin, and began to play.
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