It’s difficult to play a solo anyway.  Just the fact that you are all by yourself, with everyone staring at you and expecting you to perform for them.  But it’s worse when you are also standing in front of an orchestra, full of your friends and people you know.  This adds nervous feelings towards the front and the back.  Plus, at an orchestra concert the audience tends to be bigger then a others.  When I played twice last week, I was pretty nervous!  It helped a little that I really loved the piece.  Vivaldi’s Winter from the Four Seasons is a gorgeous movement with a lot of beauty and flash.  It’s hard, and I had to practice a lot.  But once I got it down, each time it only got easier to play.  Sometimes I just try to listen to myself and enjoy it, instead of worrying so much.  But the playing part is not what makes me nervous.  I’m just worried about what else I could possibly do to mess this up.  Of course, I could trip while walking either on stage or off.  I’ve done that before, by the way.  I could also drop my bow in the middle of a bunch of fast notes, either from weakness or possibly my sweaty fingers.  That’s the worse one: sweaty fingers make it absolutely impossible to play!  Plus, something could go wrong with my hair, or my clothes, or pretty much anything else.  When I’m thinking of things that could possibly happen, I’m definitely not thinking rationally.  Once the first one was over, it made me feel better because it went really well!  And no matter how nervous I felt, it apparently didn’t affect my performance because no one even suspected.  And afterwards, my friend gave me a dozen purple roses and I got tons of compliments from all these people for days after!  However, the day of my second performance I woke up SICK.  Luckily, it wasn’t that bad yet, and I was able to drug myself up pretty well to avoid anything worse.  All in all, the performance went just as well, as far as I could tell.  And I am just glad now that this whole thing is over and I can relax for a while.  It was so much fun!