Poster made by the Chamber Music Society of Colombo.

On one lazy summer afternoon in Japan I was relaxing on a couch at my grandparents’ place. It was the middle of the summer break and I had little in mind for what was to come once the holidays ended. Without anything particular in mind, I look at my phone to pass the time and notice a message from my violin teacher Ms. Ursula Nelius. It was an invitation to be a part of an upcoming chamber music concert to be held at the Goethe Institute in Colombo on August 25th. It was to feature a set of 44 violin duets by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. I was to play five of these duets with Ms. Nelius as part of the program and I was delighted to hear of this too. My younger brother too was to play four of the pieces before me. I realized that this would be a wonderful opportunity to perform in front of an audience that wasn’t merely other students or parents from school. It was moments like these that I knew would help improve myself as a performer and a violinist, skills of which I would soon need during the diploma program as part of my music grade. This would help boost my confidence, I thought, and give me a goal to work towards to motivate me to practice my violin anyways since that was an everlasting issue. Quickly, I replied to my teacher, telling her with full certainty that I would be honored to be a part of such an event and that I would work hard to do well for the audience.

Image taken by Akiko Morioka.

Five pieces, I thought in awe. I wonder what my teacher must have been thinking! That I could learn five duets in less than two months to and be able to perform it on stage at a concert? I guess I hadn’t thought things through with the initial craze I had felt when I was first given the opportunity. Upon receiving the music pdfs and listening to the pieces themselves, I quickly let go of my fears and stress. These pieces were each very short, not more than a minute long, and none were particularly fast or had difficult articulation, in fact all seemed to be well within my range of capabilities and most were rather slow… at least upon first glance. Underestimating the difficulty to these pieces proved to be my first mistake along this path. At home, I practiced these pieces every now and then and got the hang of it rather fast as I had thought I would. Weeks passed by and it was time to play these duets with my teacher for the first time after the break. Immediately it dawned on me that I hadn’t been giving these pieces the priority and detailed care they ought to have whilst practicing. The rhythms were off between me and my teacher for the faster, strict timed pieces, and the quality of my sound when I held out my note was much too thin and weak in contrast to her sound when playing the slower pieces. Ms. Nelius didn’t seem particularly distressed but I knew there was plenty of work needed to be done in the few weeks that was left before the date of concert. That evening, I returned home with a heavy heart and planned on practicing into the night. But I fell asleep anyways so I practiced thoroughly the next day, intent on being able to play with Ms. Nelius without any worries for the next week.

Image taken by Akiko Morioka.

The rehearsal two days before the concert came sooner than I had hoped. It was amidst a flurry of other school related projects and work I needed to spend time on which had, for the most part, pushed away the time spent on practicing the duets. I rolled into the Goethe Institute sidewalk on my Uber ride, about twenty minutes late to my rehearsal due to volleyball practice, a failed trip to buy supplies for mesocosms, and the worst traffic I had ever experienced in Colombo. It really wasn’t my day. Luckily I came in time for my turn to be up on stage to rehearse. For better or for worse, I had exhausted all the stress I had to spare that day on all three of the earlier events mentioned that I honestly couldn’t even feel anything by the time I went up. Nothing could bother me at that point so I paid little heed to the fact that I totally messed up the timing of the third piece, but hey, the music was intentionally vague and obscure anyways with weird syncopated beats that don’t entirely sound right in the conventional sense even when played correctly so as long as I started and ended the piece together the audience wouldn’t even notice a thing, I thought. In the back of my mind there was some sense that I was not in a very good position at the time so I decided that the best way to solve any of these issues was to sleep early. I was quite tired anyways.

The day of the concert had arrived and I was acutely aware of the doom I was about to be in for. I had been to these types of concerts before, organized by the Chamber Music Society of Colombo. I came naturally because my teacher was a part of this but in all honesty these were quite dreary in terms of the pieces that were played which were all too difficult to interpret and not always pleasant sounding, at least conventionally. It didn’t help that the concertmaster would go on for ages to talk to the audiences about the importance of keeping this culture of western chamber music alive in Colombo or sharing long anecdotes to make vague jokes, attempting to engage audiences. Even so, these same people came time and again to attend these concerts which meant they were seasoned classical music listeners and could probably tell how even the most ambiguous piece should sound. I sat quietly in the waiting room with my violin and bow in hand as the minutes passed by and the time for the concert neared, and these thoughts intensified and began to plague my mind. All of a sudden, I became overwhelmed by my nerves like a wave crashing onto my body, leaving me cold and unable to stop shivering. I feel my palms cumulating with sweat which I can never seem to get rid of no matter how many times I wipe them. Before I know it, I’m standing behind the door to the side of the stage. Before I know it, I’m sitting on a chair on the stage along with the other students as I wait for my turn to perform. Before I know it, my brother has finished his last piece and I feel myself rising from my chair, see my legs moving forward to the music stand, my arm reaching out to put my folder out and open the pages. I take my time to breathe, and look at my teacher for comfort, at least I’m not doing this alone, I thought. I lift up my violin and rest it on my shoulder, my thoughts wander about as I think about all the accomplishments I’ve achieved thus far like the solo performance for the MYP 5 graduation ceremony in front of the entire secondary school. Carefully, I rest my bow on to the strings, my mind flashes ahead into the future as I think about all the things I have yet to do: a presentation for Biology, catching up on French as I seem to be hideously behind, practicing writing essays for History since I take more than twice the time allotted as of now. These thoughts comforted me, it put the event I was in currently in context to everything else that was going on. It wasn’t the end-all-be-all, as I may seemed to have pictured it before. If I mess up, who cares? It’s not my money that’s been wasted to go watch an underprepared concert if that’s the case. But then again, I thought, I did spend all this time working towards this event so that I could perform so I guess I might as well give it everything I had, or at least try to. I figured the lighthearted attitude wouldn’t hurt to have and would save me a lot of energy from worrying, energy I put into focusing on what I was playing and it turned out to be fine after all. Before I know it, I’ve played through everything with relative ease, I kept to the rhythm for the most part and even held out my notes quite solidly.

In the end, it was this fine line between not caring too much but still paying enough attention to do well that helped me succeed, or at least not fail. And since then, I realized there’s no point to fuss too much about one thing when there’s alway another on the way. This proved to be the biggest reason behind why I shouldn’t need to worry about what happens now. There are plenty other things for the worry to be shared around.