Steven Isserlis

Since I’m stuck at home in quarantine (having travelled to Madrid for concerts), my didactic side seems to be working overtime; therefore I thought I might as well offer some thoughts on how (in my view) to play a melody – in this case, something almost everyone knows, Saint-Saëns’ The Swan. I really love this piece; but on the rather rare occasions on which I play it, I find that I have to spend a lot of time practising it. Why is it so tricky to get right? Well, the short answer is that it’s perfect in itself – therefore we have to return the compliment, and play it as perfectly as we can.

So – are you sitting comfortably, score in hand? OK – I’ll wait while you fetch/download it…

Good – ready? OK, let’s begin. The piano patters in the first bar seem to me to represent the flowing water through which the swan glides – meaning that the tempo (andantino grazioso) should be neither fast nor slow, just gently moving forward. It’s important that the pianist gives no more than two rhythmic impulses to the bar – otherwise the poor swan will get stuck in mud. We cellists, or violinists, or whichever instrumentalist or even singer is interpreting this much-arranged piece, must listen carefully to this opening: it provides the atmosphere that will determine how we enter with the melody. Our sound, the contact between both hands and string, must reflect the calm generated by the piano; we mustn’t contradict that feeling with our first notes. An agitated vibrato, for instance, will send mixed messages: is this a swan floating majestically, or a duck frantically quacking about its marital problems? Similarly, it’s important that the bow glides gently over the strings, allowing the instrument to ring freely, without either forcing the tone, or failing to engage the natural sonority. That way, the instrument will be happy, and we’ll be happy too; playing this melody should feel as relaxed and comforting as it (hopefully) sounds.

Then there is the question of the glissando between the second and third notes. I think it’s right to do so. Saint-Saëns was nothing if not practical; I’m sure he knew that string-players would slide between the F# and the B. (Changing string would produce a disturbing change of colour.) But how we slide is the salient point. The glissando itself must add to, not detract from, the atmosphere of serene dignity; this involves lightening the bow as the finger moves backwards towards the B – that movement not happening too fast, though of course arriving in time with the piano for the third beat. (It’s also important, I think, to keep pressing down the same finger with which we’ve just played the F-sharp, until removing it to sound the B; my teacher used to use this shift, and the opening two notes of Beethoven’s A-major sonata, op 69, as examples of the ‘classical’ slide – as opposed to the ‘romantic’, in which the finger one is about to use for the next note can take over earlier.) Our two hands must communicate here, the bow camouflaging the sound of the shift, reconnecting fully with the string only as we play the B. If we hear the sound of the whole slide, we’re in danger of giving the impression that the swan is suffering from food poisoning; on the other hand, there mustn’t be a noticeable silence between the two notes – it’s a subtle compromise, effected by lightening the pressure of the bow without stopping it.

On we go to bar 4 (progress!), with its quavers/8th-notes. Saint-Saëns himself wrote no slurs over this or the corresponding bars, leaving the choice of bowing to the player. This to me implies that the notes are not fully legato; on the other hand, they’re obviously not meant to be heavily separated. My compromise here is to play them (and corresponding places) portato – ie lightly separated within the same bow. My choice would be to slur the first two quavers/8th notes, then in the second half of the bar slur the 6 notes in groups of 4 and 2. (One could change bow on the fourth note – ie slurs of 3 and 3 – but for me that makes it sound like a 12/8 bar, the beat occurring on that fourth note; and that’s certainly not the case here – it’s very much 6/4.)
Another dignified glissando – if required – up to the high B in bar 5 brings us to the end of the first phrase (and don’t forget to observe the rest at the end of the bar). The second begins in bar 6 – which I feel should be played with exactly the same colour as bar 2. Yes, the harmonies are going to alter shortly – but they haven’t changed yet, and there’s no reason why the playing should anticipate that change; in a slightly doubtful Hungarian expression that Ferenc Rados sometimes uses, ‘this is a pig that does not know it is going to be a sausage.’ (!) It is in the next bar that we begin to move towards B minor – and the sound should reflect that new direction, vibrato and contact becoming perhaps a shade more intense (though subtly so – this is still a swan). That will give the high D in bar 9 more of a feeling of glorious arrival.

Bars 10-11, 12-13 represent the two steps of a sequence – ie they follow the same musical shape, but a tone apart. In sequences, it’s important that each step or unit has its own shade of colour; there’s no dramatic difference in dynamics between these two – but they must sound a little different from each other. (And again, the bow in particular has to work overtime to avoid any unpleasant glissandi – they occur all too easily here, for instance between the B and G in bar 10.) Bar 10 is also the beginning of the little middle section – where we leave the theme and both melodic line and harmonic progression become more exploratory. In this case, we never stray too far from the tonic; but still, the harmonies move into less-familiar territory. From Bar 14, however, we can feel that the music is moving forwards, towards the light of home, the return. The two bars 14-15 pose a question: can we get back? The question is unanswered; but with the first note of 17 we feel that the way is clear – the only way forward is a melting back into G. Again, this part of the story must be reflected in the phrasing, the colour; this involves more of a sense of direction towards the turning-point of both questions, achieved perhaps by a little more bow release towards the top of the hairpin, the vibrato slightly speeding up to the same point – and then both hands relaxing with the diminuendi. (All at exactly the same tempo, however: the rhythmic pattern underneath the melody remains unchanged.)

From bar 18, we are home again. Perhaps this will be a little warmer than the opening, as so often in a return or recapitulation; but my advice is not to plan to play this differently from the opening – if you’ve been listening to the harmonies, it will just happen. The first difference is at bar 21 – and what a glorious difference! Instead of cadencing back into the tonic, the phrase concluding as at the beginning, the line is now extended, moving into the quiet (well, mf) ecstasy of bar 22, in A minor – the sentiment heightened because the ear was expecting the music to do exactly as it did the first time around. This is the emotional climax of the piece, where the swan sings its heart out. Again, nothing hysterical or overblown – this whole piece is unified by the sense of majestic radiance it emits from beginning to end; but the vibrato can reach its most intense point here, the glissandi become a little more audible, the dynamic level a little higher. From there, there remains only a series of three questions – 23-4, 24-5, 25-6 – leading us towards the ending. Looking at the score, it would seem that bar 24 might be louder than 22; but I really don’t think so. As I said, 22 is the climax of the melody, 23-24 the first of a series of final questions. Yes, there is a crescendo marked into 24; but on the other hand, it is an octave lower than 22 was; and for the first time, the piano has fallen silent in the 2nd half of 23, after a diminuendo through the first half of the bar. That silence gives us more space to play gently (the circumflex above the long B at 24 is, I think, just an indication that the note should not die away too soon). From there, sound and colour diminish gradually, reaching a pp (in the cello part – one bar earlier in the piano) at 26, the long G. This note really has to be played in one bow – it’s better to end it prematurely than to disturb the peace by changing bow. And it can fade away as the piano’s water-figures bring us to the perfect ending of a perfect piece.

So there you have it – simple, but challenging. It’s worth it, though.

(Footnote: I know that the ballet to The Swan is often called ‘The Dying Swan’; but I don’t like to think of it that way – the cello version was never called that. And Saint-Saëns himself obviously didn’t think of it as tragic. He himself took part in many annual performances of the Carnival of the Animals in Paris for which all the players dressed up as the animals they were portraying. Poor cellist – not easy to play dressed up as a swan!)

(Footnote 2: This post was partially inspired by a lecture I heard on The Swan, years ago, by the wonderful Arnold Steinhardt.)