Caroline Balding has been my violin teacher during my three years at the university and she has done an amazing job helping to reaching my full potential on the violin. She has also assisted in providing me with the best music to suit my different strengths as well as giving me some other pieces that proved difficult but rewarding if I put the time and effort into practicing them and performing them. At the start of the semester, Caroline provided me with a few different examples of pieces to play that she thought I might enjoy playing as well as being slightly more difficult and providing me with something different to play. She is how I got to my final program, and I am very grateful.

I feel as though going to different performances through the semester and helping out with concert management has helped me as a performer as well, as I have witnessed first hand what it is like for tother people to go through the same things I do when I perform and it is nice to know that I am not the only one who feel the way I do when I perform. Nervousness and stress hits everyone in different way and it is the main difficulty that performers must deal with. However, going and watching these other talented individuals perform to the best of their ability and providing an amazing concert experience is something that I will always remember and try to provide whenever I perform in the future.

 I did go and listen to these performances online by other orchestras and these proved useful in learning the pieces and just enjoying the music. My favourite was listing to be the NOVA filharmonija playing the Surprise symphony at the Grand hotel Union in Ljubljana on the 19^th of January 2017. I thought it was particularly beautiful l the way they managed to play it all collectively as a group. I wish to carry on with my Orchestral playing even after leaving the orchestra as the experience is like no other and I cannot compare anything to playing beautiful pieces in a talented group of instrumentalists. 

The way that the pieces of the orchestra made me want to go off and practice, I feel, should be the way I practice with any music I am given, and this is what I will strive to do in the future. I believe playing in an orchestral setting had made me a better performer, and an overall better musician and would like to make sure this carries over into the future. 

I feel like the way that Thomas performed this piece should be a learning point for me with performance. The way he was calm and collected as he went on stage and the way he managed to gauge the audience’s attention was incredible. His piano playing combined with the sound of the Steinway took everyone aback and made sure that he got the applause he deserved at the end of his performance. It is a whole different style of difficulty performing alone compared to performing with ana accompanist, the fact that there is nobody to support you with what you are playing is a frightening concept for me. I feel like if that was something I could attempt to cover on my own then another set of anxiety would be taken away from myself when I perform anything. I imagine that there was a lot of hard work put into his practice both for the music that he had to perform but also the way he showed himself on stage in the way that he performed for the audience.

If there was going to be another performance, the only thing I would say is to maybe come off a little more professional to the audience as a recital like this, for classical instruments, might need to be to a more classic or professional standard. He did walk up to the piano and sit, play his piece and stand up then bow and leave. However, there can be more of a performer standard added to when he was there, such as engaging with the audience. This doesn’t mean stand up and communicate with them but show them with your music and body language how you are trying to engage with them. This was my only trivial argument I had with his performance as the music was performed amazingly and I would love to hear him perform again.