Piazzolla Pains

Rehearsed the Piazzolla with Ju Dee today. I haven't actually worked closely with another person on a work for quite a while so admittedly that took a bit of getting used to. Worse still, I've played the work before so have strong preconceived ideas of how it should sound, and so does she, and that resulted in quite a few awkward moments of "you're too loud", "you're not listening", "I don't get what you're doing" etc.

But such is the nature of chamber music. It was rather enlightening to have certain things pointed out to me, although I might have more than a little defensive at first. Hopefully I wasn't too much of a bitch. Yes, must listen, listen and never stop listening to the other person, which is surprisingly difficult when you get carried away with what you're playing.

In any case, considering that it was the first time that we've played together, things went pretty smoothly, and we should be in good shape by the concert. And I'm quietly optimistic since both of us like the work so much.