Dancing with Mendelssohn
On Sunday August 21, 3 PM, Arizona Philharmonic opens our fifth season with Peter Bay at the podium and Steinway Artist Thomas Pandolfi at the piano.
Today I want to reflect upon the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1, a highly virtuosic work filled with deft passages that require the fingers to dance lightly over the entire piano keyboard.
I used the words “dance lightly” intentionally. When Peter Bay entitled our August 21 concert “Dancing from Tonga to Vienna”, he was considering how dance relates to the other two works on the program: Argento’s Royal invitation and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. However, to me the facility required of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 also suggests the concept of dance.
The program notes explain that the concerto may have been written for “a young pianist, Delphine von Schauroth, with whom the 22-year-old composer was flirting.” From my perspective, this work could easily be interpreted as reflecting the energy and gaiety of young love. The metaphor “my heart dances” comes to my mind.
When you listen to the concerto, I invite you to be aware of how often Mendelssohn leads us to the upper register of the piano (the high notes). You usually can measure the quality of piano by how well and clear the high notes sing. On this concert you will hear a beautiful piano under the graceful hands of our soloist, Thomas Pandolfi: those treble notes certainly will sing. It is both the rapid and the lyrical upper-register passages that make me associate this concerto with dancing.
Below is a recording of the third and final movement of the piano concerto. Written to be performed at the presto (really fast) tempo, it is a fireball of nimble energy. Much of the melody and figures are pretty high on the piano. You’ll hear the orchestra quiet down or even stop playing to allow these high notes to sing and sparkle effortlessly.
As with the other two works, I know you will enjoy Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Purchase tickets at AZPhil.org. Perhaps you’ll find that your heart dances to this music.
– Henry Flurry, Executive Director
Thomas Pandolfi
Thomas Pandolfi is Arizona Philharmonic’s soloist for our first concert of our 2022-2023 season. He began his music career early on at The Juilliard School (BM & MM), where the young prodigy caught the influential ears of Vladimir Horowitz, who would become his mentor, and legendary composer, Morton Gould. Since then he has been an audience favorite, selling out the world’s most prestigious stages, including Lincoln Center Alice Tully Hall, Strathmore, The Kennedy Center, Kiev Opera House, Bucharest’s Romanian Athenaeum, London’s Cadogan Hall, and many others. In addition to being hailed as one of the greatest interpreters of Polish masters such as Chopin and Paderewski, this versatile pianist has received accolades for every thing from Bach to Gershwin, with Morton Gould saying, “It’s the finest performance of Gershwin I have heard since the composer himself.” Maestro Pandolfi is a Steinway Artist, and, when not on tour, he resides in Washington, DC.
