From the archives: Bach on the cello

I was browsing through our iTunes files this evening and came across a recording of me playing Bach on the cello in 1985. That was the year I gave a recital for what was a soon to be aborted attempt to earn a doctorate from a well-known conservatory. I won't go into the gory details here; suffice it to say that a number of unpleasant things happened that year, and the upshot was that I left and did some other things for a year or two before trying school again. The second time was the charm -- or at least, I got through the graduate program at another school without embarrassing myself too much.

The original recording is on a cassette tape. My husband and I were experimenting once with transferring tape to digital format, and this is the result. It has a kind of fuzzy, distant sound quality.

Bach, Prelude, Suite No. 5 in C minor for solo cello (beginning cut off)

I remember those little slips feeling like the most godawful messes at the time, but they are not so bad. Listening to this now, I wish it had been more graceful and a bit less on the scratchy side, though there's a lot of strength to it.

(For visuals, just imagine me with a perm. It was the '80s, after all.)