Sentimental Work: Mihaela Martin on the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

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Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto has always had a very special place in my repertoire. When I play it, I feel like I’m being carried away by a kind of flying, rolling energy. It’s incredible how, despite being written in a minor key, it never sounds sad because of Mendelssohn’s use of lively dotted rhythms. I first heard it on the radio when I was around eight years old; it was the recording by Zino Francescatti, and I was fascinated. I don’t know if it was the combination of the music and Francescatti’s sound together, but I remember thinking that this really was a beautiful piece.

When I was twelve, I got the chance to play the concerto with a full symphony orchestra. The music school where I studied had an end-of-year concert given by the seniors, and one pupil was chosen to be the soloist. Normally it would be an older student, and I think I was the youngest ever to be selected. Learning the concerto gave me that same sense of excitement and expectation that I’d experienced when I first heard it.

The feelings expressed in Mendelssohn’s music always feel very direct, as if uncontaminated by life’s experiences. I remember that my teacher focused on the lyrical sections, such as the second theme of the first movement, rather than the flashy virtuosic parts. He wanted to help me find the phrasing and the logical course of telling the story, particularly in the second movement. On the day, I don’t think I was nervous at all; I was just excited to play with the big orchestra for the first time, at such a young age.

Soon afterwards, I went to the Enescu Competition where I heard Philippe Hirschhorn perform the concerto in the final round. For me, that experience was mind-blowing. I’ll never forget the electricity in his playing, combined with unforced elegance. I remember sitting on the edge of my seat, barely breathing, from the first note to the last. There was a natural energy and generosity in his playing, which showed me what a musician could and should be: we must always try to give everything we know and feel. And I was very happy when, almost 20 years later, I got the chance to play chamber music with Philippe in Germany.

Nowadays, as a teacher, I often encounter young students who’ve learnt some of the greatest concertos but never played the Mendelssohn. And I think it can be beneficial to young players: it’s easy to identify with, it shows the power of expressive language, it’s wonderful for developing your musical imagination, and it’s a big step towards learning other works later. If you study a heavily Romantic work like the Tchaikovsky Concerto, you’ll then have to go back to Mendelssohn, which somehow seems a backward step, diminishing him!

When playing the concerto, you need to understand that the sound needs a certain type of purity. Things that might seem very romantic are not achieved through cheap tricks. So if you feel like you want to add in a portamento somewhere, or some rubato, it always needs to be integrated in the context of the rhythm and harmony. So when one of my students starts to learn it, it’s important to go to the root of the score to understand the textures of the accompaniment, what they mean and what they create.

I think that virtuosity on the violin comes out of energy: how to steer your inner pulse and temperament according to what you hear and feel. After that comes the fine tuning: of course, rubato is essential but it should not become the first source of your interpretation. And I teach my students to ask themselves what a change in rhythm or harmony might mean: how it changes the pulse and the colour of the sound.

INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD