Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Intro and question Mendelssohn Rondo

Hello, I am an adult piano student hoping to devote more time to playing. I have been checking out the forums for quite a while (year or so) first time posting.

Question on Mendelssohn Rondo capriccioso Opus 14
measure 148 on my score (urtext) shows staccato but not 149, 150 and 151. Should they also be staccato?

also love to play (not that I really love mende, first piece I have tackled)
Chopin
Scriabin
Schumann

thanks for your help

I'm not the familiar piece, but if the notes in those measures (149-151) are in a pattern similar to measure 148, they should most likely be played in the same way unless it is denoted otherwise. Oftentimes I see composers and publishers leave out markings such as this since it's considered to be understood. Of course I don't have the score in front of me, so I could be totally wrong =o)

Yes, they are in the same pattern. Thanks so much.

Nice piece of music.

I've got an old Schirmer edition and meaures 148 - 153 are all marked staccato. 148 and 149 are piano. 150 is crescendo. 152 is forte.
Hope this helps.

The free version off of piano.ru lists them all as staccato, though I'm not sure who the publisher is on that. I've always played these measures as all staccato.

Hi, sorry if I sound irrelevant, I want to discuss about the same piece but a different aspect of it. I am playing this piece, Rondo Capriccioso Op. 14 and both my private as well as school music teachers have heard it and gave me different opinions about the interpretation of the piece so I'm kind of confused as to how I should play it. My private teacher told me that I should be more daring with my rubato in the first part(Andante) and when I played with more rubato for my school music teacher, he said I should not rubato so much as Mendelssohn's style is quite classical. Hope someone can enlighten me as to how I should play it. Thanks.

Certainly Mendelssohn doesn't require the same amount of freedom that might be permissible in Chopin, Schumann or Liszt but neither should he be played coldly or metronomically. Are you sure you didn't go overboard on your private teacher's suggestion and start pulling the piece around to excess, thus occasioning your school teacher's advice.

I'm not very sure about that. Do you know of any good recording of the piece which shows an accurate interpretation of it?

Well, there's no "one way" to play a piece so I suggest you have a listen to the various interpretations on You tube (of which I've just checked a few). For my part, Pletnev overdoes the emoting and shoots his bolt too soon...after all the Andante is only an introduction, albeit a lovely one, to the Rondo which forms the bulk of the work. Cziffra seems to me to judge its scale better, and although he's expressive he doesn't go over the top.

Ok, thanks for the advice:)

I don't know whether you're working on enough pieces to do this, but I'd recommend working on completely different repertoire with each teacher. I tried studying the same pieces under two teachers at once, and much of the experience was wasted because of the mutually incompatible suggestions they gave me.

also love to play (not that I really love mende, first piece I have tackled)

Welcome to the forums Nocturne Gracie!. The Rondo Cappricioso is an extremely difficult piece - I'm assuming you're a returning adult piano student?

I would agree that the rubato in the first section should be tempered by the fact that Mendelssohn was a very early "romantic" composer.

If you can find it, listen to the Perahia recording. I think he gets it just right. He plays it just like I did when I was 13-14 (only a WHOLE lot better!!).

He was barely older than Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. However it's true that by temperament, association and training he showed more affinity with the older "Early romantic" school of Moscheles, Hummel et.al, than did his great contemporaries. Wagner expressed the opinion that no one expressed the external beauty of things into music as well as Mendelssohn, but, for all that, he felt that, and for all his gifts, Mendelssohn failed to move his listeners to the depths of the soul and painted only the appearance of sentiment and not the sentiment itself. Of course, Wagner was a proponent of the "music of the future" and I, for one, cannot entirely agree with him even though I recognise an element of truth in his remarks. But perhaps his summation of Mendelssohn might be borne in mind when preparing an interpretation in order that the sentiment isn't larded too thickly on the music...as I feel Pletnev does in his recording of the Andante in question.