You must connect with your audience: Pianist Rahel Senn

The first thing you notice about Rahel Senn is that she is beautiful — a beauty that seems to stem from within. She’s dressed in a sari, for the first time, and loves how comfortable the Indian traditional drape can be.

“I’ve seen women wear a sari in Singapore and now that I’ve worn one, I love how it feels,” she says as we open the conversation.

“This is my first visit to India and I am keen on experiencing how Indians take to my brand of music,” Rahel shares.

Rahel is known to be prodigy of sorts and just into her early twenties; the young musician speaks with as much confidence as someone twice her age.

“I play a combination of classical pieces and liberally mix it with more popular takes on concert music. While the classical pieces are brilliant on their own, I think one connects to an audience through a popular piece more genuinely. To me connecting to an audience is what a performance is all about,” she explains.
Rahel recently launched a CD titled Rahel Senn: Retour à l'Art Brut and the CD speaks volumes of her individual style.

“I do not believe in being influenced by contemporary performers, because I believe if you are worthy of praise, you will be remembered after your time and hence my profound respect lies with those who have lived before me and are remembered still. I hope that I shall be respected and fondly remembered after my time too and that is all I hope to achieve in this lifetime of music — to be able to create and contribute enough to the vast repertoire, ensuring I am given a place in eternity,” explains Rahel, as she prepares for her evening tonight at the Mövenpick Hotel and Spa.
She’s grounded, surprisingly so for her age, and not over-confident, another trait we believe artistes her age could do with a generous helping of.

She believes in the palpable, the real, the seen and yet Rahel is one of those artistes who also believes in magic.

“While I think that artistes sometimes exaggerate the metaphysical aspects of music, I do believe that there can be magic too. For instance, this one time, I was performing a piece meant to represent the five elements in an open air audience on a particularly cloudy day. Rain was predicted, but the showers opened magically only when I began to play a piece themed on Water. Later as I came to a close on that piece and moved on to a Fire themed piece, the rain stopped and a rainbow lit-up the sky up — it was magical, just out of this world. How else could you describe something like that?” Rahel enthuses.

We’re slowly running out of time and as we wrap up the delightful conversation we ask Rahel one last question. As a young musician what is the one thing that you think you need to be aware of?

“Young musicians across the world need to realise that you need to connect with your audience. It is really dangerous to get lost while you perform, to build a glass case around you and forget what you are at the performance for. It’s one thing to be involved in what you play and another thing altogether to be so involved, that your audience ceases to exist. You will never really have a great performance if you fail to connect and realise what your audience wants and that’s where, according to me, lies the secret of a great performer, musician or artiste,” Rahel concludes.