Number 3-5 of 100 days: Shostakovich, Beethoven & Mozart

Day 3: Shostakovich 10 movement 2. I love this piece and played it about a year ago with the RSNO - I miss playing it terribly! The second movement is like living on the edge - running very fast along a tightrope. It is exhilarating. I ended up hitting the paint on the canvas in time with the piece. I wanted a feeling too of Stalinist USSR about it - a nod to the aesthetic of USSR propaganda.

mark making with ink while listening

Mark making while listening

The response to this one was considerable and I had several offer to buy it. It was purchased by an orchestral musician who appreciates and adores this music - I couldn’t be more pleased!

Day 4: Beethoven Symphony 3, Eroica. Beethoven is the staple of all bass parts. It is in bass players DNA. I adore playing this symphony because the bass part really drives so much of it. I have always seen this piece as mostly green - lots of different shades of it. I don’t know why but I do. I don’t have synesthesia but I have some pieces of music that have definite colour associations for me.

Colour palette

I used watercolour and this time did all four movements in a quartet on one sheet. I’m not as satisfied with this one. It feels too timid for the epic symphony Beethoven wrote. I will revisit Beethoven during this project I am sure and hope to do him better justice.

Day 5: Mozart overture to The Marriage of Figaro. This overture is so cheeky, so fun, so mischievous. I feel you can hear Mozart laughing throughout. As all good overtures, this piece tells of the story to come in the opera - the cross dressing, the mischievous cunning plans, the love entanglements, the comedy. Yet in Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s hands with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe this overture is even brighter, even more exciting than older recordings - in short he makes it sound modern.

Detail

So inspired by that recording I decided to use watercolour on the very modern Yupo paper. I used the colours of carnival, of a masked ball to show all the capers and jokes Mozart intended.