Piano Trio in D minor, Op.11

Felix Mendelssohn did not underestimate the quality of his sister’s music. “I heartily rejoice in her compositions,” he told their mother in 1837, “and think them charming and admirable.” He was not, on the other hand in favour of her publishing them: “For this purpose a succession of works is indispensable, one after the other…and from my knowledge of Fanny I would say she has neither inclination nor vocation for authorship. She regulates her house and neither thinks of the public nor of the musical world, nor even of music at all, until her first duties are fulfilled. Publishing would only disturb her in these, and I cannot say that I approve of it.”

It is clear from the few works that she did eventually publish - in spite of her brother’s disapproval - that if she had been determined to become a full-time composer Fanny Mendelssohn had both the imagination and the professional accomplishment to make a success of it. The Piano Trio in D minor, which was written not long before her death in 1847, is a particularly impressive score, beautifully written for the three instruments - with not only the violin but also the cello on equal terms with the piano - and uncommonly well calculated in construction. She followsFelix Mendelssohn’s frequent practice in avoiding extreme contrasts in material within a movement, so that the main themes can be comfortably integrated with each other, but goes further than her brother in extending the strategy to the whole work. Behind the Piano Trio in D minor there is a basic thematic image that is featured in at least one manifestation in each movement, making its decisive last appearance at a crucial point towards the end of the Finale.

If Fanny Mendelssohn - or Fanny Hensel as she had become in 1829 - sounds like Felix Mendelssohn at times it is scarcely surprising. They had been brought up in the same musical milieu and, anyway, his was the music she knew best. It would not be difficult to find in Felix’s music one or two tunes resembling the first subject of the first movement of Fanny’s Piano Trio in D minor. The more important resemblance, however, is between that theme, proclaimed by violin over rolling piano figuration in the opening bars, and the romantic second subject introduced some time later by cello against a throbbing piano accompaniment. The two themes are quite different in mood but have salient rhythmic and melodic features in common. By the end of the dramatically articulated development section they have almost, like the equivalent themes in Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C minor, merged their identities.

The two main themes of the Andante espressivo, the tenderly contemplative piano melody at the beginning and the delightfully scored serenade in the middle section, are similarly related, both to each other and to the material of the first movement. The short Lied - a reminder that Fanny Mendelssohn was also a poetic exponent of songs without words - is based very charmingly, though with minimal development, on another variant of the basic thematic material.

If the Lied seems a little timid, the Finale more than makes up for it in the extent of its expressive and stylistic variety. Introduced by a fantasia-cadenza for the piano, it is motivated by a striking contrast between a first subject of Chopinesqe melancholy and a second subject as cheerful as any Schubert dance episode. The contrast is sustained and heightened by a resourceful development section - including an intriguing gypsy-style treatment of the main theme on piano and violin - before the romantic second subject of the first movement makes its structurally conclusive re-entry at the beginning of a triumphantly D major coda.