Guitar
"I was born as an artist when I've learnt to play for myself"
In the context of my academic studies I’ve never turned attention towards the guitar. Honestly, I’ve been so completely concentrated on the singing that even piano lessons (and I feel really ashamed and sorry about it today) were by me quite neglected. Once, I remember, and it was my last winter in Russia, I tried to learn some chords of the popular songs on a classical guitar, but that time it remained an episodic experience. By the way, all my early childhood has been acompanied by my father’s playing the guitar and singing sotto voce the pieces of a so-called russian chanson.
Years and years later, already in Italy, after having listened to a concert of one piano-guitar duo from Germany, where a lady was singing the songs of her own authorship accompanying herself on an acoustic guitar, I just say to myself “Why not?..” And the very next day I’ve bought my first guitar, classical, not an acoustic one, simply because then I had no idea about the difference. Who has something to do with the world of the contemporary music knows that usually the singer-songwriters prefer an acoustic guitar in their performances, because its sound is stronger and louder, more metallic (just like its strings) and has much more sustain. But personally, even admitting the superiority of the acoustic guitar over the classical in terms of loudness and strength, I think, and I hear with my ears, that the sound of the classical guitar offers much more variety of colours and dynamic. it’s just like a human voice, very similar to the human voice.
After a less than a year I’ve realized my first professional studio recording as a singer and guitar player. That first recorded song wasn’t mine but just my interpretation of a lyrical ballad by one russian rock-band.
In the summer 2020, while in the Piedmont Alps, I’ve composed my first guitar accompaniment for the verses of one russian poet. Towards the end of that year some short fragments for the solo guitar were ready, and two poetic fragments from Giordano Bruno became two songs.
It’s incredible how the sound, the colour, the warmth of a classical guitar suits to a human voice, how the guitar actually collaborates with the singer, how the voice itself changes the colours and modulates together with the different harmonies and registers of the cLassical guitar. At least in my case, it was a huge step forward in terms of the vocal expressivity and richness of timbre. The vibrations inside and outside the soundboard help to feel and to stabilize my own vibrato, especially on the low notes.
As a mezzo-soprano I always performed being accompanied by someone else (a pianist, an organist) or by an orchestra under the guidance af a conductor. This way of performing is radically different from the situation where a singer produces his own accompaniment. It offers the great advantages, such as the possibility to be totally concentrated on the process of singing, on the technical vocal aspects, on the text, on the facial expression, on the gestures. But the singer is just obliged to consider and to accept also the interpretation of the one who accompanies him. When you sing with an orchestra, the conductor is almost always your lord and master. In the best of the cases you can have a compromize. Some singers like very much this “balance of power”, accept it and never question it.
Personally, I was born as an artist when I’ve learnt to play for myself. And not simply because there wasn’t any more an external authority compelling me to follow the rules I didn’t decide. This freedom alone would be just a banal rebellion against the order, usually a symptom of the lack of professionalism. On the contrary, the responsibility to accompany your own singing requires the great discipline and attention. You just must be very well educated musically if you want to perform as a singer-guitarist on an acceptable level. When you sing and play for yourself, you are your own conductor, and you must be sometimes very severe with your voice and your spontaneous tendencies for too much freedom. Without enough order and with too much unjustified freedom your performance quite certainly will degenerate into the chaos. You’re not indipendent in an absolute sence of the word when you sing and play your own accompaniment. You become like two people in one, who must be coordinated and synchronized, and perform on more or less the same technical level. Of course, I’ve studied singing for many years while the guitar was for me “la terra incognita”. Being aware of this disparity, I had to practise, and to practise, and to practise. To achieve the coordination between my vocal chords and my fingers wasn’t at all an easy task. More than one episode of dejection I’ve experienced while trying to raise my guitar technic closer to my singing level. In front of this difficulty, as in front of many others during my artistic carrier, the love for my profession, the devotion to the music and the discipline have supported me. There’s nothing you can’t learn to do on a good level if your allies are coherence, perseverance, loyalty and firm believe in your cause. To be a musician is a hard work, with the hours and hours spent just in quite boring routine practising. But when you have found THAT sound, THAT expression, THAT colour – you receive a recompense which by far exceeds all the mental and physical expenses of the creative torment. Because it’s not just a new song that you’ve managed to interpret, but it’s a new artistic quality and a new intellectual capacity that you’ve discovered in yourself. And for me, every artistic achievement means my personal upgrade.
Guitar
"I was born as an artist when I've learnt to play for myself"
In the context of my academic studies I’ve never turned attention towards the guitar. Honestly, I’ve been so completely concentrated on the singing that even piano lessons (and I feel really ashamed and sorry about it today) were by me quite neglected. Once, I remember, and it was my last winter in Russia, I tried to learn some chords of the popular songs on a classical guitar, but that time it remained an episodic experience. By the way, all my early childhood has been acompanied by my father’s playing the guitar and singing sotto voce the pieces of a so-called russian chanson.
Years and years later, already in Italy, after having listened to a concert of one piano-guitar duo from Germany, where a lady was singing the songs of her own authorship accompanying herself on an acoustic guitar, I just say to myself “Why not?..” And the very next day I’ve bought my first guitar, classical, not an acoustic one, simply because then I had no idea about the difference. Who has something to do with the world of the contemporary music knows that usually the singer-songwriters prefer an acoustic guitar in their performances, because its sound is stronger and louder, more metallic (just like its strings) and has much more sustain. But personally, even admitting the superiority of the acoustic guitar over the classical in terms of loudness and strength, I think, and I hear with my ears, that the sound of the classical guitar offers much more variety of colours and dynamic. it’s just like a human voice, very similar to the human voice.
After a less than a year I’ve realized my first professional studio recording as a singer and guitar player. That first recorded song wasn’t mine but just my interpretation of a lyrical ballad by one russian rock-band.
In the summer 2020, while in the Piedmont Alps, I’ve composed my first guitar accompaniment for the verses of one russian poet. Towards the end of that year some short fragments for the solo guitar were ready, and two poetic fragments from Giordano Bruno became two songs.
It’s incredible how the sound, the colour, the warmth of a classical guitar suits to a human voice, how the guitar actually collaborates with the singer, how the voice itself changes the colours and modulates together with the different harmonies and registers of the cLassical guitar. At least in my case, it was a huge step forward in terms of the vocal expressivity and richness of timbre. The vibrations inside and outside the soundboard help to feel and to stabilize my own vibrato, especially on the low notes.
As a mezzo-soprano I always performed being accompanied by someone else (a pianist, an organist) or by an orchestra under the guidance af a conductor. This way of performing is radically different from the situation where a singer produces his own accompaniment. It offers the great advantages, such as the possibility to be totally concentrated on the process of singing, on the technical vocal aspects, on the text, on the facial expression, on the gestures. But the singer is just obliged to consider and to accept also the interpretation of the one who accompanies him. When you sing with an orchestra, the conductor is almost always your lord and master. In the best of the cases you can have a compromize. Some singers like very much this “balance of power”, accept it and never question it.
Personally, I was born as an artist when I’ve learnt to play for myself. And not simply because there wasn’t any more an external authority compelling me to follow the rules I didn’t decide. This freedom alone would be just a banal rebellion against the order, usually a symptom of the lack of professionalism. On the contrary, the responsibility to accompany your own singing requires the great discipline and attention. You just must be very well educated musically if you want to perform as a singer-guitarist on an acceptable level. When you sing and play for yourself, you are your own conductor, and you must be sometimes very severe with your voice and your spontaneous tendencies for too much freedom. Without enough order and with too much unjustified freedom your performance quite certainly will degenerate into the chaos. You’re not indipendent in an absolute sence of the word when you sing and play your own accompaniment. You become like two people in one, who must be coordinated and synchronized, and perform on more or less the same technical level. Of course, I’ve studied singing for many years while the guitar was for me “la terra incognita”. Being aware of this disparity, I had to practise, and to practise, and to practise. To achieve the coordination between my vocal chords and my fingers wasn’t at all an easy task. More than one episode of dejection I’ve experienced while trying to raise my guitar technic closer to my singing level. In front of this difficulty, as in front of many others during my artistic carrier, the love for my profession, the devotion to the music and the discipline have supported me. There’s nothing you can’t learn to do on a good level if your allies are coherence, perseverance, loyalty and firm believe in your cause. To be a musician is a hard work, with the hours and hours spent just in quite boring routine practising. But when you have found THAT sound, THAT expression, THAT colour – you receive a recompense which by far exceeds all the mental and physical expenses of the creative torment. Because it’s not just a new song that you’ve managed to interpret, but it’s a new artistic quality and a new intellectual capacity that you’ve discovered in yourself. And for me, every artistic achievement means my personal upgrade.
