Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Song Without Words in E Major, Opus 19, No. 1
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig

Between 1830 and 1845 Mendelssohn composed a number of short pieces for piano which he called Lieder Ohne Worte: “Songs Without Words.” That title makes clear that the impulse in this music is fundamentally lyric: a singing melody, usually in the right hand, is supported by a relatively straightforward accompaniment in the left, and many of these pieces are easy enough to suggest that Mendelssohn intended them for the growing number of amateur pianists in the first part of the nineteenth century. But many of them are frankly virtuosic, so difficult that they remain beyond the reach of all but the most talented amateur pianists. All these pieces, though, show Mendelssohn‘s virtues – appealing melodies, a nice sense of form, rhythmic vitality and polished writing for the piano – and they became vastly popular, particularly in England. On one of his visits to London, Mendelssohn played several of the Songs Without Words for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and it is a mark of the penetration of this music into popular culture that in A Study in Scarlet Dr. Watson notes that after hours of scraping aimlessly on his violin, Sherlock Holmes made it all up to his friend by playing some of the Mendelssohn Lieder, which Dr. Watson called one of his particular favorites.

Mendelssohn collected and published these pieces in groups of six; six sets appeared during his lifetime and two more posthumously. The first was published in London in 1832 under the title Original Melodies for the Piano, and its opening piece, in E major, is the first of Mendelssohn‘s many works in this form. Marked Andante con moto, it features a dignified melody in the right hand over quietly-rippling accompaniment in the left; the brief center section preserves the same mood, and Mendelssohn rounds the piece off with a return of the opening material. Some listeners may know this music in another form: Jascha Heifetz arranged it for violin and piano and used it as an encore piece under the title Sweet Remembrance.

Scherzo from A Midsummer Night‘s Dream (arr. Sergei Rachmaninoff)
Wedding March from A Midsummer Night‘s Dream (arr. Franz Liszt)

Many regard Mendelssohn‘s incidental music to A Midsummer Night‘s Dream as his finest work, a score that evokes the fairyland magic of Shakespeare‘s play in music of rustic humor and gossamer delicacy. Several of the movements have become famous on their own, and on this recital Orion Weiss plays two of these movements in arrangements by two of the greatest pianists who ever lived.

The Scherzo is an interlude between the first two acts of the play. To Puck‘s question “whither wander you?” the fairy replies:

Over hill, over dale
Thorough bush, thorough brier
Over park, over pale
Thorough flood, thorough fire

This quicksilvery music captures perfectly the flitting of that fairy, and finally the music winks out on quiet pizzicato strokes. Sergei Rachmaninoff made a transcription of the Scherzo for his own recitals, and he first performed it while on tour in San Antonio on January 23, 1933.

In the fifth act of the play, all of the various lovers – whose separations and confusions have been so troubling (and so much fun) – are finally married, and to introduce this act Mendelssohn wrote a Wedding March in C major, full of ringing trumpet fanfares and bright energy. It is the best measure of the success of Mendelssohn‘s music for A Midsummer Night‘s Dream that today – nearly two centuries after he wrote this music – this march is the first thing we think of when someone mentions wedding music. Liszt and Mendelssohn were friends, and Liszt knew the Midsummer Night‘s Dream music very well – he conducted it with his orchestra in Weimar. Liszt made a piano transcription of the Wedding March (and of Dance of the Elves) in Weimar during the years 1849-50, shortly after Mendelssohn‘s death.

Sextet in D Major for Piano and Strings, Opus 110

Listeners should not be misled by this work‘s high opus number: Mendelssohn wrote the Sextet when he was barely fifteen, and it acquired this opus number when it was published in 1868, over twenty years after his death. When Mendelssohn completed the Sextet on May 10, 1824, (which was, coincidentally, three days after the première of Beethoven‘s Ninth Symphony), he was at the end of his apprentice period and on the verge of achieving his mature voice: the Octet for Strings came from the following year, the Overture to A Midsummer Night‘s Dream from the year after that. If the Sextet is not on a level with those masterpieces, it is nevertheless an engaging work that employs unusual forces, including a rare appearance in chamber music by the much-neglected doublebass.

No one knows why Mendelssohn wrote for the unique combination of violin, two violas, cello, doublebass and piano – perhaps he had this particular set of players available to him at the time. One would expect Mendelssohn to exploit fully the rich tonal possibilities he has available in the middle and lower ranges with these instruments, but in fact he does not, choosing most often to assign the melodic line to either the piano or violin. The violas and lower strings usually play accompanying roles in the Sextet, and this gives the piano‘s high cascading triplets and the violin‘s E-string a particularly silvery and bright sound.

The sonata-form Allegro vivace contrasts the breadth of its opening theme with a more sharply-defined second idea. At many points the young composer divides his forces into two distinct sonorities, as the flowing strings trade passages with the percussive piano. Showers of triplets from the piano provide the movement‘s rhythmic pulse, and these triplets power the movement to its close. The gentle Adagio – in the unusual key of F-sharp major – is a lyric interlude. Mendelssohn mutes the strings and marks the music dolce; once again, piano and strings exchange the melodic line. The Sextet‘s third movement is its most striking. Mendelssohn marks it Menuetto, but then, surprisingly, sets it in 6/8 rather than the expected 3/4 and asks that it be Agitato, a most unusual marking for a minuet movement. Agitated this music certainly is – and far from the character of most minuets; its surging outer sections surround a calmer trio, and after a reprise of the minuet the movement vanishes on the lonely sound of solo pizzicato strokes.

The piano launches the concluding Allegro vivace along its energetic way. Mendelssohn‘s biographer Philip Radcliffe hears “polka-like rhythms” in this sonata-form movement, which maintains its jovial spirits until the closing minutes, where Mendelssohn suddenly brings back the minuet theme, again marked Agitato, and the movement rises to a powerful climax before ending with a coda marked Allegro con fuoco. The ferocity of the close, where the music returns to the major only in the final measures, is at sharp odds with the generally pleasant nature of most of the Sextet.

Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 20

It has become a cliché with a certain kind of critic to say that Mendelssohn never fulfilled the promise of his youth. Such a charge is a pretty tough thing to say about someone who died at 38 – most of us would think Mendelssohn never made it out of his youth. And such a charge overlooks the great works Mendelssohn completed in the years just before his death: the Violin Concerto, the complete incidental music for A Midsummer Night‘s Dream and Elijah. But there can be no gainsaying the fact that the young Mendelssohn was a composer whose gifts and promise rivaled–perhaps even surpassed–the young Mozart‘s. The child of an educated family that fully supported his talent, Mendelssohn had by age 9 written works that were performed by professional groups in Berlin. At 12 he became close friends with the 72-year-old Goethe, at 17 he composed the magnificent overture to A Midsummer Night‘s Dream and at 20 he led the performance of the St. Matthew Passion that was a key event in the revival of interest in Bach‘s music.

Mendelssohn completed his Octet in October 1825, when he was 16. One of the finest of his early works, the Octet is remarkable for its polished technique, its sweep and for its sheer exhilaration. Mendelssohn‘s decision to write for a string octet is interesting, for such an ensemble approaches chamber-orchestra size, and a composer must steer a careful course between orchestral sonority and true chamber music. Mendelssohn handles this problem easily. At times this music can sound orchestral, as he sets different groups of instruments against each other, but the Octet remains true chamber music – each of the eight voices is distinct and important, and even at its most dazzling the Octet preserves the equal participation of independent voices so crucial to chamber music.

Mendelssohn marked the first movement Allegro moderato ma con fuoco, and certainly there is fire in the very beginning, where the first violin rises and falls back through a range of three octaves. Longest by far of the movements, the first is marked by energy, sweep and an easy exchange between all eight voices before rising to a grand climax derived from the opening theme. By contrast, the Andante is based on the simple melody announced by the lower strings and quickly taken up by the four violins. This gentle melodic line becomes more animated as it develops, with accompanying voices that grow particularly restless. The Scherzo is the most famous part of the Octet. Mendelssohn said that it was inspired by the closing lines of the Walpurghisnacht section near the end of Part I of Goethe‘s Faust, where Faust and Mephistopheles descend into the underworld. He apparently had in mind the final lines of the description of the marriage of Oberon and Titania:

Clouds go by and mists recede
Bathed in the dawn and blended
Sighs the wind in leaf and reed
And all our tale is ended.

This music zips along brilliantly. Mendelssohn marked it Allegro leggierissimo – “as light as possible” – and it does seem like goblin music, sparkling, trilling, and swirling right up to the end, where it vanishes. Featuring an eight-part fugato, the energetic Presto demonstrates the young composer‘s contrapuntal skill. There are many wonderful touches here. At one point sharp-eared listeners may detect a quotation, perhaps unconscious, of “And He Shall Reign” from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel‘s Messiah, and near the end Mendelssohn skillfully brings back the main theme of the Scherzo as a countermelody to the finale‘s polyphonic complexity. It is a masterstroke in a piece of music that would be a brilliant achievement by a composer of any age.