Mendelssohn Felix & Fanny Quatuor Ebene 2
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MENDELSSOHN FELIX & FANNY QUATUOR EBENE 2 Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, from a painting by R. Poetzelberger © Bettmann/CORBIS 3 Felix Mendelssohn 1809-1847 QUATUOR EBENE String Quartet No. 2 Op. 13 in A minor Pierre Colombet en la mineur . a-Moll violin I (5-12), violin II (1-4) 1 i Adagio – Allegro vivace 7:54 Gabriel Le Magadure 2 ii Adagio non lento 7:43 3 iii Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto 5:10 violin I (1-4), violin II (5-12) 4 iv Presto 9:21 Mathieu Herzog viola Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel 1805-1847 Raphaël Merlin String Quartet in E flat major cello en mi bémol majeur . Es-Dur 5 i Adagio ma non troppo 4:30 6 ii Allegretto 3:37 7 iii Romanze 6:44 8 iv Allegro molto vivace 5:40 Felix Mendelssohn String Quartet No. 6 Op. 80 in F minor en fa mineur . f-Moll 9 i Allegro vivace assai 7:36 10 ii Allegro assai 4:33 11 iii Adagio 8:26 12 iv Finale: Allegro molto 5:30 76:50 4 Following on from our Mozart recording last year, we wanted to pay FELIX AND FANNY MENDELSSOHN homage to the composer who was aptly described by his friend and Entwined strings and hearts admirer Schumann as ‘the Mozart of the nineteenth century’ and who, despite having enjoyed the adulation of audiences in his own time, is these ‘Farewell, don’t forget that you’re my right hand and the apple of my eye, days accorded a somewhat qualified admiration. The music of Felix and that without you, therefore, music has no meaning for me’, Fanny Mendelssohn expresses both joy and defiance, is capable of moving wrote to Felix, her beloved younger brother, who she used to refer to as ‘my listeners to tears, and has a romantic ardour that ranges from a kind of little Hamlet’. Felix, for his part, addressed Fanny as ‘my dear Cantor’ and humanist majesty to transports of passion and simple human suffering. she was always the first person to whom he showed his works. When Felix In a way, we often feel that he is on the same level as his audience and is heard that Fanny had died suddenly on 14 May 1847, he let out a cry and revealing his state of soul to his contemporaries, which is perhaps why he fainted. Six months later, on 4 November 1847, he too succumbed to death. exerts less fascination than Beethoven, who himself claimed that He was only thirty-eight years old. he was not addressing himself directly to his contemporaries, but to By then he had become a celebrated composer, whose works received future generations. more performances than anyone else’s. He was also a revered conductor, The freshness of Op. 13 (the composer’s first published quartet) and the acclaimed in Leipzig, Berlin, London and anywhere else he happened to ultimate cry of despair that is his Op. 80 (written after the death of Fanny) appear. He had married a beautiful and gentle woman who gave him five bookend Mendelssohn’s quartet output. They share the minor mode (all children – but for Felix, life without Fanny, his ‘guiding spirit’ and alter his other quartets are in the major), the influence of Beethoven and the ego, was devoid of meaning. It is indicative of the close relationship fact that they were both inspired by Fanny (whose own quartet is at the between them that Fanny died while rehearsing Felix’s Die erste centre of this disc), but they mark the opposite poles of Felix’s creative life. Walpurgisnacht, In order to bridge this gulf, we thought it would be a good idea to swap around our two violinists and to have Gabriel Le Magadure play the first violin part in Op. 13. While the group as a whole still has the same artistic approach in this arrangement, we definitely hear the composer in a different light. Quatuor Ebène 5 an extraordinary score that she was planning to conduct at her next Berlin admired Goethe’s draw ings and the paintings of their cousin Philipp Veit concert. For the reclusive Fanny enjoyed the distinction of being the only (a member of the Nazarene move ment) and were on friendly terms with a female Kapellmeister of the nineteenth century. As a woman born into an number of German artists. One of these, the Prussian court painter extremely wealthy family, and of Jewish origin, she was prohibited from Wilhelm Hensel, who produced crayon portraits of all the leading appearing in public by her father and later her brother, but within the personalities of the day (including both Fanny and Felix as adolescents), Mendelssohns’ Berlin mansion she could do as she pleased. There, she was was to become Fanny’s husband. free to play, compose and conduct the best instrumentalists and choral After Fanny’s death, the English music critic Henry Chorley wrote in singers in the Prussian capital whenever she wanted. The cream of Berlin The Athenaeum: ‘Had Madame Hensel been a poor man’s daughter, she and European society flocked to her Sonntagsmusiken or musical evenings; must have become known to the world by the side of Madame Schumann in March 1844 she was able to inform her brother with some pride that and Madame Pleyel, as a female pianist of the very highest class. Like her ‘Liszt and eight princesses were present’. brother, she had in her composition a touch of that southern vivacity Fanny and Felix were brought up as if they were twins. They both which is so rare among the Germans. More feminine than his, her playing studied with Friedrich Zelter at the Berlin Singakademie, and both won bore a strong family resemblance to her brother’s in its fire, neatness, and the admiration of Goethe. But when it came to pursuing a professional solidity. Like himself, too, she was as generally accomplished as she was career in music, Fanny realised, to her utter despair, that what Felix was specially gifted.’ permitted to aspire to – a life of travel, concerts and publication of his The string quartet, on the other hand, does not occupy the same place in music – was deemed to be out of the question for her. It was not until 1846 their lives. In addition to studying keyboard instruments, Felix was also that she dared to publish a selection of her works, but, in a touching letter, started off on the violin by the gifted Eduard Rietz, a violinist in the Berlin she admitted: ‘At the age of forty, I am as afraid of my brothers as I was of court orchestra, which the young composer conducted in the my father when I was fourteen … I hope I won’t bring disgrace on you all, Mendelssohn family home. Felix dedicated his wonderful Octet for as I’m not a femme libre, and alas not even an adherent of the Young strings, which he wrote at the age of sixteen, to Rietz as a token of his Germany movement.’ Her work-list – which runs to over 400 pieces – admiration. Rietz’s premature death had a devastating effect on makes poignant reading, for her taste in poetry, her liking for the Lied ohne Mendelssohn, but by then he was almost the artistic equal of his young Wort, fugue and oratorio reveal a total identification with her brother. The mentor. Like Bach, Mozart and Schubert before him, Mendelssohn liked two also shared a love of art. Felix may have been the only one to to play the viola part in quartets, as this placed him in the centre of the demonstrate a natural talent for water colour painting, but they both polyphonic texture. 6 Mendelssohn wrote eight quartets (including six numbered ones), fleet-footed elfin trio. But it is in the Presto finale, which is launched by a which cover his entire career from 1823 onwards. His incredible pre- recitative over double-stopped tremolos, that the composer displays his cocity means that he was the only Romantic composer who produced extraordinary gifts to the full by combining and metamorphosing the numerous master pieces while Beethoven was still alive. In his second previous material, transforming the recitative idea into a fugue subject batch of published chamber music, he included the Quartets Opp. 12 and (a speciality of Mendelssohn’s) before ending with a pianissimo 13, the String Quintet Op. 18 and the Octet Op. 20. This bumper restatement of the introductory Adagio. This tribute to the recently collection was performed in public in Paris at the beginning of 1832 by deceased Beethoven was worthy of the man himself. First performed in Pierre Baillot and his ensemble during Mendelssohn’s third and last stay Paris on 14 February 1832 by Baillot and his chamber ensemble, Felix’s in the French capital. Op. 13 quartet won the approval of the French critic Joseph Ortigue, who praised the eloquence of the contrasted movements, the composer’s skill Felix: Quartet in A minor, Op. 13 in developing his material and the dramatic energy of the finale. Written mainly in 1827, when Felix was eight een, this magnificent quartet was not completed until 1832. The combined influence of the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Spohr and possibly also of Cherubini can be felt in addition to that of the late Beethoven quartets – the ultimate point of reference. The recurring motif of this ambitious four-movement work is taken from the song Frage, which Mendelssohn had written not long before in response to the death of Beethoven. The question ‘Ist es wahr?’ (Is it true?) posed by the basic motif echoes the ‘Muss es sein?’ (Must it be?) of the older composer’s Op.