This piece appeared in Pianist Magazine Issue 94. More popularly recognized as a cello solo (with piano accompaniment) famed as the music to the ‘Dying Swan’, this arrangement by Silotti is beautiful by its elegance and simplicity. Here, I’m using the term simplicity in its relative sense. If you take transcriptions by composers such as Liszt, a relatively simple piece of music is embellished to a new level – often then putting it beyond the reach of anyone but a very accomplished, if not virtuoso, pianist. You only need to compare Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Serenade with the more standard versions given to beginners to see what I mean. With The Swan, Silotti on the other hand has sought to retain just the Piano and Cello parts without embellishment – elegantly weaving in the melody into the accompaniment. This is very much his style – trying to render an authentic version of what was originally written onto the piano.
I was at first unsure why in Pianist they had categorized it as an ‘advanced’ score. It is after all quite slow, doesn’t seem to require any great dexterity and should fit nicely under the even my short, fat fingers. That said, I found it a long way from ‘simple’ to learn. The first tricky part is that whilst the accompaniment maintains the same overall structure, the melody is literally woven into it – the melody notes alternate from above, below and inside the accompanying pattern. This is surprisingly difficult to voice accurately and (initially at least) to memorise. In two places, the melody passes between the hands which again is challenging to get perfectly smooth and expressive – never mind maintaining a legato line.
Luckily, the piece came with a piano lesson within the magazine which gave some initial pointers. I followed most (though not all) of the practice tips. The magazine recommended practicing just the melody which I neglected to do. I have to admit that was an error – after quite some hours I decided I would need to go back to just the melody. I should have known better as I had in fact previously seen similar advice from Graham Fitch where he recommends practicing ‘strands’ separately as well as hands separately (so Bass and Melody, Bass and Accompaniment, Accompaniment and Melody).
Another challenge I faced was that of tension … but not in the usual sense of the hands getting tense due to fast or repetitive playing. In fact, from a sense of musical tension which (in my case) seems to spill over into a physiological tension which manifests itself in wrong notes. If I try to explain myself, the two places are bars 4 and 8 where the melody rises from the left hand up the keyboard. Both of these locations also involve passing the melody from right to left to right to left and back to right. In each case I feel a wonderful musical tension (in the best sense of the word) as the melody rises gracefully upwards to reach a beautiful calm on the top note. I’m convinced it’s largely psychological but my hands seem to insist on messing these two bars up on a regular basis.
I was forced to go back here to both the ‘hands’ and ‘strands’ separately principle. I re-focussed on bars 4 and 8 by practicing Bass and Melody only for a while. I worked through the remainder practicing Accompaniment and Melody and Accompaniment and Bass only – working hard to keep the Accompaniment nice and piano.
Finally, I did my first Tommy’s Piano Corner Facebook page video of my new piano playing this piece which I uploaded back in October 2017. I think my interpretation can definitely still benefit from some more work – but for now, I’m just going to enjoy ‘playing’ it for relaxation.
Do let me know if you have learned this piece yourself – how did you find it?
