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Elisabeth’s Final Violin and Voice Recital

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Elisabeth has now finished up her final year of high school and she’s performing in her final voice and violin recitals while she gets ready to transition to college.

This summer we will be coming back to the States for our scheduled home assignment and in August just three of us will return to Slovakia. Elisabeth will remain in the States to start her college career and study voice performance at Wheaton College. I guess that makes these the last recordings of recital performances that I’ll be posting as a family update.

In the first video Elisabeth plays her final recital piece (Adagio by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály) for her violin teacher Beata Bieliková and in the next she sings Giacomo Puccini’s O mio babbino caro, which is an Aria from his opera Gianni Schicchi.

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Elisabeth and Max Transition back to Slovakia

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One of our big prayer requests as we started our sojourn in the States was that Elisabeth and Max would have good transitions to US schools. They did. In fact, they both had really great experiences. Now, as we return, they face the even bigger challenge of coming down from the mountaintop and transitioning back to the Slovak school system.

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Elisabeth Runs with the Big Dogs

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When I was a kid, the highlight of Thanksgiving was playing football with my uncles after the meal. They loved to mess with me and of course I would try to match their roughness, which meant that sooner or later I got hurt or just plain frustrated. When it started to show, my Dad would say, “If you wanna run with the big dogs, you gotta pee in the tall grass.”

Elisabeth got her chance to run with the big dogs recently, but unlike me, she was able to hold her own.

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2016 Recitals

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Music lessons in Slovakia are split into three stages with the first stage lasting four years, the second is also four years and the third is two or three (I’ll find out when my kids get there). Max finished the first stage this year which means he had to perform for the head of the music school and then played for a special graduation concert (Elisabeth did this last year).

For this year’s recitals, we have Elisabeth playing a duet (Mazas Rondo from Twelve Little Duets) with her teacher.

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Elisabeth’s Concerts and Recitals (video)

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Elisabeth has had some more opportunities to play her violin for various concerts and recitals this year. In November her music school held a 100 year celebration of two Slovak and Czech composers. For that concert Elisabeth played “Songs My Mother Taught Me” by Dvořak. Click through to see that video plus another with the performance that Elisabeth considers her best so far (coming soon).
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