Planning a Recital Program, Part 3 of 3: Play What You Love

MENDELSSOHN, SONG WITHOUT WORDS, VENETIAN BOAT SONG, OP. 30, NO. 6

Imagine being asked to wear a dress or a suit that you don’t like.   

Now, imagine going to a very important event in that same dress or suit, and trying to feel comfortable.

Even if people tell you how nice you look you’ll find it difficult to accept their compliments, because you yourself don’t like what you’re wearing. All you can think about is how unhappy you are, and it makes it very difficult for you to enjoy yourself.

This is the same kind of feeling you get when you try to perform something you don’t like. Music is so much about feeling and the sharing of emotion, that if you don’t like what you are playing, it will show.  You will not give over to playing your best, and trust me, your audience will know it.

This is why every artist should only perform pieces they can feel—not just because you can play all the notes correctly.

The particular piece I am working on now is by Mendelssohn, his Song Without Words, Op. 30, No. 6. This is one of those pieces I truly love, and like a favorite dress that I wear a lot but with different accessories from time to time, I am always trying new ways to make it even more interesting.

Since my last lesson with Mr. Cosmo I have been inspired by his teaching to try and do some new things to bring out different aspects of the piece, which has changed the way I approach the work. I am very grateful to him for the ideas that have come out of his inspiring and wonderful lessons, and very happy that thanks to him my performance has become more refined, and my interpretation has deepened. 

There are many reasons for this.  First, Mr. Cosmo described Venice to me to help me visualize it more emotionally. He said the waters are very calm on the canals, with constant swells from the boats moving the water in small, quiet, and calming waves. He also said that in the evening, because church bells can be heard from various parts of the city, I should use the long trill spanning two measures in the middle of the piece to capture the overall sense and mood of the city, in addition to suggesting that it would be wonderful to imagine the ritardando at the very end of this piece as a gondolier reaching his destination.

These and other ideas led to my thinking of the piece in an entirely new way.

First, I slowed the tempo, just a bit.

Then, I began to think of the left-hand accompaniment as waves, and the right-hand melody as the gondolier's song. I imagine the gondolier singing beautifully and with a great deal of passion, which led to my using rubato to play a bit more slowly but with intense emotion.

Another aspect of the work is that Mendelssohn writes the left hand in such a way that each measure progresses as a block of six eighth notes, with the beat occurring on the first one.

With this in mind, and at the same time, of those six notes, Mendelssohn uses a two-note chord only on the third and fifth notes—notes that aren't normally emphasized because they're not downbeats. He then makes the rest single notes, even on the downbeats.

Mr. Cosmo said that in doing this, the goal for Mendelssohn might have been to "wait" a bit for the two chords to be heard, rather than just letting the six notes flow through, and that made lot of sense to me. 

The result is that the beat and rhythm of the wave-like left-hand feels like the rowing of a boat, with the chords moving against the resistance of the water.

Approaching the piece in this way has been a wonderful learning experience for me, which also gave me a lot of insight, as well as refreshing my thinking about it. I am making this the opening piece of my recital at CCF not just because I truly love it, but also because with it I can help the audience “set sail” with me on a musical journey.

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