Felix Mendelssohn's Career As a Composer
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10-27 Sat Mat.qxp_Layout 1 10/18/18 2:07 PM Page 29 Notes on the Program By James M. Keller, Program Annotator, The Leni and Peter May Chair String Quintet in B-flat major, Op. 87 Felix Mendelssohn elix Mendelssohn’s career as a composer was not strictly that of the mainstream. As a Fand conductor was flourishing in 1845. result, certain of his works — such as the first He was considering competing job offers and last movements of this quintet — can from two crowned heads (the Kings of Prus - sometimes sound less like classic chamber sia and of Saxony), he was deriving satisfac - music than like little string symphonies, re - tion from his pet project of elevating the flecting a hierarchy in which the first violin Leipzig Conservatory into a world-class in - spends more time in the spotlight than the stitution, and he enjoyed great happiness on lower-lying “accompanying” instruments. In the home front, the more so when he and his fact, his interest in those first and last move - wife greeted the arrival of their fifth child, ments seems fixed less on the themes them - Lili. There is no way that the composer, who selves than on the harmonic and structural was only 36 years old, could have known processes used in developing them. Wilhelm when he wrote the B-flat-major Quintet that Altman, writing in the classic Cobbett’s Cyclo - it would be among his last works. He died two pedic Survey of Chamber Music , perspica - years later after a series of strokes. ciously observed: In this piece, the exuberance of his early style remains in the outer movements, which If the main theme of the opening Allegro vi - seem practically born of the same breath as vace cannot, in spite of its freshness of in - his earlier string quintet (Op. 18), his cele - vention, be called important, it gains brated Octet for Strings (Op. 20), and his considerably by the working-out to which String Quartet in D major (Op. 44, No. 1); in it is subjected in due course. contrast, the two inner movements reveal the technical and emotive growth he had experi - IN SHORT enced in the intervening years. The first movement is dashing and athletic, Born: February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, with fleet triplets often propelling the accom - Germany panying parts. The first violin assumes what Died: November 4, 1847, in Leipzig might be called a concertante role, somewhat dominating the other instruments. This is Work composed: summer 1845, in Soden very much a trademark of Mendelssohn’s (near Frankfurt), completed on July 8; it chamber music, and it has come under fire was published posthumously as his Op. 87 from some critics through the years. The clas - World premiere: unknown, although it is sic wisdom is that, in chamber music, a com - documented that the work opened the first poser should strive to equalize the individual “Pops” concert at James Hall in London on parts as much as possible, involving each February 14, 1859, with violinists Henryk Wieniawski and Louis Ries, violists C.W. Doyle player in the presentation and working-out of and a Mr. Schreurs, and cellist Alfredo Piatti. themes. Mendelssohn was sometimes even- handed in this regard, but his personal style Estimated duration: ca. 30 minutes OCTOBER 2018 | 29 10-27 Sat Mat.qxp_Layout 1 10/18/18 2:07 PM Page 30 The second movement enters a very dif - astonished (as well he might be) by the mas - ferent landscape. Mendelssohn is acknowl - ter’s late string quartets, with their visionary edged as one of the all-time masters of the expansion of form and other novel composi - scherzo, but here he offers a curious one, an tional procedures. The tense, rhapsodic ex - Andante scherzando . Scherzo means “joke,” pression of this Adagio e lento has a good deal and it is natural that a piece cast in that style in common with passages in Beethoven’s should be fast — even riotously fast. But here quartets; and if one looks ahead rather than is a far more languorous scherzo — Andante backward, one could just as easily see this as implying a relaxed, “walking” tempo — and foreshadowing Brahms. Here Mendelssohn it falls to the performers to decide whether achieves an expressiveness of nearly operatic they will interpret the movement as charm - proportions, with the passages in which the ing (stressing the “scherzando” side of the first violin plays over shuddering tremolos in equation) or eerily melancholy (underscor - the lower strings reaching toward the melo - ing the “andante”). drama of a “dark and stormy night” scenario. The third movement stands as a monu - This leads attaca — that is, without a ment to the shadow cast by Beethoven on the break — into the brief finale, which, like the generation that followed him. Even as a opening movement, is mostly an exercise in young man, Mendelssohn had avidly de - bustling vibrancy, with a beautiful theme for voured Beethoven’s late works, and he was two violas thrown in for contrast. A Composer’s Misgivings The fortunes of Mendelssohn’s String Quintet in B-flat major have fluctuated over the years. It proved hugely popular early on, especially in London, where, on February 14, 1859, it was the open - ing piece on the first of the renowned “Pops” concerts, a series that brought it back more than 40 times, with unvarying success, before the “Pops” were discontinued 43 years later. Mendelssohn was less pleased with it — a characteristic stance from a composer given to self- criticism and endless revision. In 1846, his friend Ignaz Moscheles (the pianist and composer) in - scribed an entry in his journal describing an evening he spent with the Mendelssohns. “We also looked at the Viola Quintet in B-flat major,” he wrote, “and Mendelssohn claimed that the last movement was not good.” This is doubtless an accurate reflection of Mendelssohn’s sentiments, and it is supported by the fact that he withheld it from publication during his lifetime. That does not automatically confirm that the work is defi - cient: even such an obviously splendid piece as the Italian Symphony remained unpublished at Mendelssohn’s death, due to his qualms about its quality. On the other hand, one can be reasonably sure that if Mendelssohn had lived longer he probably would have wrought at least some, and perhaps many, revisions in his late string quintet. In the event, per - formers and audiences may approach it as a piece that reached only a provisionally finished state. Mendelssohn, ca. 1843 30 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC .