New goal on the blog: sharing music every day as a break and boost during these unsettling times. Hope this will brighten your day and help you stay well. 🙂 If you’d like to check out earlier posts, you’ll find the first of this series here.

Today’s musical two-fer is another pair of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words. (I did promise we might see a lot of those here…) In exploring the Songs without Words more than I ever have before, I’ve really fallen in love with the style of these pieces. Most are gentle and thoughtful, although others are excited, energetic, majestic, even sometimes aggressive. Mendelssohn seems to have been fascinated with how much he could express by having the piano accompany itself in a song.

Both of today’s pieces are pretty new to me. In working on this project for the blog, I’m pushing myself to learn new music and make recordings almost every day. Recording tends to be stressful, but I figure this isn’t a bad way to put in the time during self-quarantine. These two videos aren’t perfect, but they’ll give you a pretty good flavor of these lovely pieces.

Use the listening time to quiet your mind. If you’d like, as you listen, consider what kind of story each piece is telling, or simply experience what each one evokes for you. As always, you’re welcome to share your thoughts and responses to the music in the comments.

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