Music Exams!

The girls have been preparing for their exams for many months now, and we were just going off to their final practise when Niamh moved her chair back in the car and inadvertently pushed Eden's cello right out that back door and onto the road. We went straight to their lessons, but Eden's teachers said that the cello strings were buzzing and the instrument needed to be fixed. We took it to the strings man the next day, and he thought the problem lay in the fingerboard, so he gave Eden a different 1/4 size cello to use for the exam, and said that he had to much work on the go to fix her cello. I could see Eden was upset by this, she had given the new cello a try in his workshop and did not like it at all. When we got home she started practising straight away to get used to the new cello, but not long into the practise she was in floods of tears, so unhappy with the cello and the sound that she was getting out of it. The neck was a lot thicker so she was struggling to get her hand comfortable, and there were differences which made it feel horribly unfamiliar. I could hear that the pieces were nowhere near as nice as she had been playing them. I phoned her piano teacher up and explained what had happened. He told me to get her cello back as soon as we could, since it would be far better to have the buzz of the strings and just explain to the examiner what happened. We phoned the strings man back and he just said, sorry I cannot fix your cello so quickly, I said not to worry, we just want it back as is. He said I could only come back the next day(the day of the exam). By now I was silently thanking the Lord that their exams were 4:48 in the afternoon(normally they are 10 in the morning, and I had been a bit unhappy that they were so late, but the Lord's hand was in it all). We went back the next morning, and the strings man said that he found the problem, there was a crack clean through the neck and when he had taken the fingerboard off, the entire scroll had just fallen off. He had managed to glue it back on, put new strings on, and set it all up(after saying he wouldn't have time, thank you Lord again). He could not guarantee that it would not break sometime in the future, especially if it got bumped, but for now he had glued it on really solidly, and it was sounding fabulous with the new strings. We went home, and the girls had one last practise, and then off to the exams. I sat in the waiting room with them, and Eden went in first for her Grade 5 piano exam. When she came out she was in floods of tears again. It took a few seconds before I could find out what happened. She explained that the sight reading was the hardest piece of music she had ever seen, so many sharps and then flats that she completely bombed on it, I asked if everything else went ok, and she said that she played everything else really well. Niamh had gone in by this time, so I just spent the time chatting to Eden about how I also found the sight reading hard in my music exams, and that she probably still did really well, and that she really doesn't need to worry. Niamh came out all smiles, everything went well she said, a bit of a mistake in one piece but she wasn't concerned about it. Eden was then ok to go in for her cello, and I opened the outside door so I could hear her playing, I could hear her playing so beautifully, what a relief.
We then left, knowing that because the exams were at the very end of the day we wouldn't have long to wait for the results. We went to the shop for some dinner, and then the call came with the results while I was in the car. Eden's teacher said, are you sitting down because all of their results were distinctions, what a joy!! He then said that the examiner had spoken to him about how upset Eden was, but when he found out that she was 10 he said that her playing was 5 years ahead of her age, and had only taken one mark off out of all the pieces she played, meaning that most of them were 100%. Of course Eden was so surprised to hear that she had a distinction, and it looked like she was on cloud nine for the rest of the evening.

Eden playing Hungarian stomp on cello, it is such a pity we don't have this with piano accompaniment as she played it in the exams because it really makes the piece come alive.

Niamh playing Menuetto and Trio, Beethoven, again it sounds so much lovelier with piano accompaniment.