meanwhile, back at the clinic ...

there is actually a group, with the newly admitted patients,
forming of classical string players.
We do not have, sadly, a true string quartet.
That said, there are three now:
one violinist, one violist, and one 'cellist.
The three of them, when they get a free evening,
congregate after supper (and after the final therapy group meeting)
and they get their instruments out.

On one occasion I attempted something on piano with them,
and on other occasions I have simply listened to them rehearse.

At first there was a lot of sight-reading going on because
we didn't all know the same pieces.

There is an interesting arrangement of an existing piece,
the Bach concerto for two violins in D minor
-- or rather, of its opening movement.
Somebody took the second-solo-violin part,
and the bass line which the cello plays,
and did an ingenious merge, just with that opening movement:
the second-solo-violin part is transposed down an octave,
and blended into the bass line.
And thus, you end up with
a duet for violin and cello.
Not the same without an entire orchestra filling in the chords,
but still you get a spare, clean arrangement of the piece.
It actually works,
and every time the two of them play it, it sounds better.

There is also a Shostakovich Prelude, not very long, which is
a duet for viola and cello --
or, perhaps, a viola-cello arrangement of something different?

Anyway, those two players ran through that one.

Then there was the evening -- this was weeks ago actually --
when the violinist was not free, and the question came up, is there anything for viola, cello, and piano?   It's rare.
And predictably, what we came up with was an arrangement of a differently scored piece of classical music, and what a find we caught:


Opus 114 by Johannes Brahms -- VERY late opus number for him, he was an old man and a fully mature composer, at his best --
is scored for a trio of clarinet, cello, and piano.
And it is arranged with
the clarinet part played by the viola instead.
So we ran to a public-domain computer website
and printed the score and the parts out.

Being as it's Brahms, and ALL of us were sight-reading,
I suggested we attempt the two SLOW movements in the middle?
Well, my intentions were good, and it was still ...
erm ... in a way it was entertaining and fun, but
OH, how we butchered the Brahms! And we kept bogging down and getting stuck.

The other night, the cellist confided to me that although he has not practiced his cello part in the Brahms,
he did find time to pull up online sites where he can listen to the music, which of course he did not know before;
and he could see/hear that this is a beautiful piece of chamber music
and worth working on.

All this, in addition to the ongoing dramas of
treatment at a mental health clinic. It's a change of pace, anyhow.