I’ve got done with this all-Mendelssohn project just last Saturday and I feel quite satisfied with how it all turned out eventually.
I was expecting a small rainfall. Like a very few positive comments and a small applause etc.
I was wrong. It was more like a blizzard. We received an endless amount of praise after the performance.
It was truly a remarkable day presenting some of the most substantial works of Mendelssohn non-stop, having Mayumi Sano on the piano for Rondo Capriccioso and Gondolalied, Yasuhiko Harada as a (counter) tenor for arias from Elijah and other songs, and myself on the violin & viola for respective sonatas.
At the beginning phase, there was a lot of uncertainty. There were a lot of doubts. There were some difficulty with the planning.
But I really want to congratulate all of us for having tried to find the way to make it happen (which we did), and did our very best to convey all the visitors the splendour and power of Mendelssohn’s music (which I think got across).
One important thing to remember, though, is that this concert itself is NOT the end goal. What we did was to open the door.
Despite the reevaluations and revivals of a couple of his works in the last few decades, Mendelssohn’s music is, on the present day, hardly valued in an adequate manner and there’s still a long way to get to the cusp of the modern artistic repertoire.
We must continue to make a great deal of effort trying to navigate them through the lengthy process of education and enlightment until Mendelssohn’s music has broader and fuller recognition around the world.
I’m already planning to do yet another project deeply focused on Mendelssohn and I have so many ideas of how it could be done. It will be the next crucial step and I think it’ll hopefully happen earlier next year.
That’s all I can say for now.
HM
HIKARU MATSUKAWA 