As usual, this Saturday starts with group class. But, not as usual, I miss most of it because I forgot my wallet, so I drop M off at class and run home to get it. (Without the ID in my wallet, we can’t go to swimming.)
I get back toward the end, and her teacher asks for volunteers to play. I’m gratified that M volunteers eagerly — when I dropped her off, I instructed her to volunteer so that she could practice for her recital this afternoon. The teacher selects a shyer kid to play first, but then he picks Maura, who plays the Bach Tanz.
To my dismay, she botches the structure badly, playing AB 3 times, not 2 times, seeming visibly confused at the end of each section about what comes next, and forgetting when she was supposed to play tosto. On the plus side, she was obviously trying very hard to figure out what she should be playing. But just as obviously, she didn’t have an idea in her head as she was going along.
In the car to swimming and at lunch, we sang the song and talked about her story some more. I tried at one point singing just the four-bar intro, tapping the beat, and asking M to say “A,” “B,” “C,” or “D” on the first beat of each section — this would have required her to hear the song correctly in her head — but it didn’t quite work (she was coming in too early).
To my surprise, however, when she actually played at the recital, she nailed it. She was totally focused, and she remembered the entire structure, including the shifts to tosto in the repeated A and C sections.
Now if only dad had remembered to turn on the portable audio recorder in time! (I got video on my pocket camera, but the sound on it is terrible.)