Piano Sextet in D major Op.110 (1824)

1 Allegro vivace 2 Adagio 3 Menuetto: Agitato 4 Allegro vivace

What made Mendelssohn choose the peculiar instrumentation of his Sextet in D major – violin, two violas, cello, double bass and piano – we can only guess. The probability is that the ensemble was determined by the string-playing friends he had at his disposal at the time and who were prepared to lend their support to a 15-year-old composer playing the solo part in a chamber-scale piano concerto. Even at this stage in his development, however, Mendelssohn was too good a composer to treat the strings as mere accompanists. They introduce the sonorously melodious opening theme of the first movement in D major and, while the piano glitters in inexhaustibly brilliant passage work, the strings are integrated with it in unfailingly resourceful counterpoint. If they have less independence in the Adagio in F sharp major, they do at least introduce, and have a fair share of the theme, to which the piano devote such lyrical attention.

Another peculiarity of the work is the Menuetto heading of the third movement which, set in D minor at an Agitato tempo and in a 6/8 metre, is far nearer to the modern scherzo than the old-fashioned minuet ­– the contrastingly relaxed middle section in F major not withstanding. The D major Allegro vivace last movement not only sustains the momentum but also, at a point where the work seems about to end, recalls the thrusting D minor material from the so-called Menuetto and restores the D major tonality only in the closing bars. Although Mendelssohn made no effort to publish the work, perhaps because of the clear influence of Weber on the piano writing, the Sextet is entirely worthy of the composer who was to produce the Octet a year later.