Two Pieces for String Quartet

Fugue in E flat major, Op.81, No.4

Capriccio in E minor, Op.81, No.3

Of the Four Pieces for String Quartet posthumously published as Op.81, only two of them have anything to do with each other. The Andante, an unconventionally and effectively constructed set of variations in E major, and the Scherzo, a delightfully characteristic example of its kind in A minor, are the two middle movements of a quartet Mendelssohn was working on a few months before his death - at much the same time as the great String Quartet in F minor, Op.80. The Capriccio in E minor was written four years earlier, between the “Scottish” Symphony and the Violin Concerto. The Fugue in E flat dates from sixteen years before that.

It is unlikely that either the Fugue or the Capriccio was ever intended as part of something else. The Fugue in E flat seems to represent the teenage composer, a year after he had completed the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, studiously involved in a study in adding a dimension of profundity to his style: with late Beethoven as his model, he does it most convincingly. As for the Capriccio in E minor, it is difficult to imagine it modestly taking its place alongside two or three other movements in a larger construction. In its two vividly contrasting and complementary parts, it is not so much a quartet movement as an independent display piece. Beginning as a tenderly melodious song without words, it merges by way of a short violin cadenza into one of the most brilliant fugal movements ever written for string quartet.

Gerald Larner©