String Quintet in A major, Op.18

1 Allegro con moto 2 Intermezzo: andante sostenuto 3 Scherzo: allegro di molto

4 Allegro vivace

Following Mozart’s example, Mendelssohn wrote his Quintet in A for string quartet with an additional viola, as he was to do in his Quintet in B flat nineteen years later. Unlike Mozart, however, he does not make a special feature of the violas so much as integrate them into a discreetly enriched texture. In its original form of the work, as Mendelssohn wrote it in 1826, the Allegro con moto was followed by the present Scherzo, a Minuet and the Allegro vivace finale. Six years later, however, when away in Paris, the composer heard of the death of his friend Eduard Rietz, violinist and dedicatee of the Octet in E flat. As a memorial to Rietz he inserted an Intermezzo between the Allegro con moto and the Scherzo, discarding the Minuet to accommodate it. It is clearly a more mature composition distinguished above all by the elegiac quality of its opening theme in F major.

The D minor Scherzo, which both echoes the equivalent movement in the Octet in E flat and anticipates the fairy music in the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, is a brilliant inspiration. The Allegro vivace finale, a sonata-rondo based on the playful little theme introduced by first violin in the opening bars, is no less ingenious and no less entertaining. Mendelssohn is particularly witty here in incorporating not only a fugue but also a kind of double fugue in the development without once seeming anything but innocently high-spirited.

When Mendelssohn wrote his String Quintet in A major, at the age of seventeen, he was already an experienced composer. Several chamber works were actually in print - the three Piano Quartets, Op.1-3, and the Violin Sonata in F minor, Op.4 - and there was a growing catalogue of high- quality orchestral music to his credit, including the Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op.11. He had completed the first ever Octet for strings a few months earlier and he was about to make a start on the even more miraculous Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture.

Following Mozart’s example, Mendelssohn wrote his Quintet in A for string quartet with an additional viola, as he was to do in his Quintet in B flat nineteen years later. Unlike Mozart, he does not make a special feature of the violas here so much as integrate them into a discreetly enriched texture - as in the harmonic support applied to the main theme of the Allegro con moto when it is introduced by first violin in the opening bars or in the contrapuntal lines drawn over the skipping cello line in the extended transition to the second subject. If it is a little unfortunate that the new theme that emerges on a fortissimo climax so clearly derives from a Beethoven model, Mendelssohn compensates for that by closing the exposition with a characteristically magical intervention of quietly pattering quavers. Although the pattering figuration continues through much of the development, the middle section of the movement is devoted mainly to the first subject, which is recalled for further fond attention after the foreshortened recapitulation.

In the original form of the Quintet in A major, as Mendelssohn wrote it in 1826, the Allegro con moto was followed by the present Scherzo, a Minuet and the Allegro vivace finale. Six years later, however, when away in Paris, the composer heard of the death of his friend Eduard Rietz, violinist and dedicatee of the Octet in E flat. As a memorial to Rietz he wrote what he called a “Nachruf” (or obituary) and presented it as an Intermezzo between the Allegro con moto and the Scherzo of the Quintet, discarding the Minuet to accommodate it. It is clearly a more mature composition - he had written the Hebrides Overture and the Reformation Symphony by then - and is distinguished above all by the elegiac quality of its opening theme in F major and the beauty of the scoring in the central development section and the lingering coda.

The D minor Scherzo, which both echoes the equivalent movement in the Octet in E flat and anticipates the fairy music in the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, is a brilliant inspiration. Mendelssohn’s very personal answer to the Andante scherzoso of Beethoven’s Quartet in C major, Op.18, No.4, it combines scherzo and fugue in an unfailingly resourceful and enchanting way until it finally evaporates in D major.

The Allegro vivace finale, a sonata-rondo based on the playful little theme introduced by first violin in the opening bars, is no less ingenious and no less entertaining. Mendelssohn is particularly sensitive in drawing sustained melodic lines to offset the restless figuration that prevails around them and is extravagantly witty in incorporating not only a fugue but also a kind of double fugue in the development without once seeming anything but innocently high-spirited.

Gerald Larner©