String Quintet No.2 in B flat major Op.87 (1845)

1 Allegro vivace 2Andante scherzando 3 Adagio e lento - 4 Allegro molto vivace

Ferdinand David, leader of Mendelssohn’s orchestra at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, wrote to the composer in 1844 asking him for a “violin piece in stilo moltissimo concertissimo … or else a quintet.” Eccentric though it was, the association of concerto and quintet seems to have got him thinking. Less than a year later he wrote a String Quintet in B flat scored in distinctly concertante style. Far from making a special feature of the two violas as Mozart had done in his quintets, he integrates them into a texture designed largely to support and offset an uncommonly prominent first violin part.

The concertante nature of the Allegro vivace is clear from the start as the first violin rises above the other four instruments with the exuberant main theme. There are contrasting episodes, mostly those associated with the more intimate second subject, but the concerto-soloist aspirations of the first violin are not long suppressed. The delightfully relaxed and intricately detailed Andante scherzando, on the other hand, is a model of democratic scoring. In the elegiac Adagio e lento in D minor the first violin gradually re-assumes its dominant role, securing itself a central cadenza, and takes the lead in the high-spirited activity of the finale.

Ferdinand David, leader of Mendelssohn’s orchestra at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, wrote to the composer in 1844 asking him for a “violin piece in stilo moltissimo concertissimo … or else a quintet.” Mendelssohn’s immediate response to that was the Violin Concerto in E minor. But the association of concerto and quintet seems to have got him thinking. Less than a year after completing the Concerto he wrote a String Quintet in B flat scored in distinctly concertante style. Far from making a special feature of the two violas as Mozart had done in his quintets, he integrates them into a texture designed, at least in the outer movements, to support and offset an uncommonly prominent first violin part.

The concertante (if not exactly “concertissimo”) orientation of the Allegro vivace is clear from the very start as the first violin rises above a tremolando accompaniment on the other four instruments with the exuberant main theme. There are contrasting episodes, mostly those associated with the more intimate second subject, but the concerto-soloist aspirations of the first violin are not long suppressed. The delightfully relaxed and intricately detailed Andante scherzando, on the other hand, is a model of democratic scoring. In the elegiac Adagio e lento in D minor the first violin gradually re-assumes its dominant role, securing itself a central cadenza and inspiring the last-minute conversion to D major. It also leads the high-spirited activity in the finale – although it is actually the two violas that rescue the second subject, forgotten since its first appearance, just before the end.