Masterclass: Jennifer Koh on ‘Méditation’ from Souvenir d’un lieu cher

 The following extract is from The Strad’s June issue Masterclass: Tchaikovsky Souvenir d’un lieu cher with Jennifer Koh. To read it in full, click here to subscribe and login. The June 2021 digital magazine and print edition are on sale now

Piece no.1: Méditation

The first eight bars of the violin line in Méditation repeat throughout the piece, and the choices of how to play them are numerous. You could stay on the G string, or change within the first two bars; you could slide within the first two notes, change the timing of a shift, or slow down your vibrato. Use your different tools at different times, to build up the colours as you go.

The material in bar 40 repeats from bar 47 with the same dynamic, but this time the phrase is longer, going up to fortissimo, so I like to give it a darker colour on the G and D strings through bars 48–50, and then to climb high up the A string in bar 51. I don’t move to the E string until I’m near the fortissimo range for the last few notes of bar 52.