I practise a lot.

I try and sit at the cello every day. Days I’m teaching in a school, I’m up before sun-rise, and sit at the cello for a goodly while before I leave. (I’ll often then return after a day’s teaching, but my quality of practise isn’t so good….) On days I’m not teaching, I’ll sit and practise for hours – sometimes up to 5. Most days it’s a good time – exploring, trying new things. Learning new repertoire. Revisiting things I know, often looking at them in a new light.

I was practising a Bach suite (the fifth one. It’s totally fabulous. And huge – such a big play!) the other day, and realised that I’m still improving. I could do things that I couldn’t before when I last performed this two years ago. Some things felt easier. Some phrases spoke to me in a different way.

And so I got wondering – what has made me improve? I mean, you’d hope I did, after all the time I choose to sit at the instrument. I perform a lot, so I’m trying to always be the best I can. (No point in expecting people to come and hear you otherwise, is there?) I play with lots of different instruments, and adjust my sound accordingly – I can play really soft with a guitar, for instance. Very loud with a harp. Is it playing lots of Bach (It’s like eating your greens – it’s very good for you as a musician!)? Is it challenging myself physically in the yoga room, balancing and doing back-bends? Is it getting older? Doing recordings?

It’s possibly all of those things. But at the moment, the thing I’m thinking is making the most difference is that I play a lot of music that isn’t originally written for cello. It’s keyboard music, or violin music, or vocal lines. So I have to work out how to get things sounding the best I can on my cello. No-one cares that it’s awkward. Or difficult. They care that it’s played well. That it’s phrased and sounds beautiful.

So I keep searching and wondering. Can I play this better? Is this the best fingering? Can it sing more? Sometimes my obsessiveness (for want of a better word) serves me badly. I get frustrated with myself. I don’t take a day off. I forget that, after all, it’s OK to not be perfect.

But it’s also pushing me. Making me a better musician, a better player. And stopping and reflecting on that, it makes me smile.