Two Preludes and Fugues

in E minor, Op.35, No.1

Allegro con fuoco - Andante espressivo

in F minor, Op.35, No.5

Andante lento - Allegro con fuoco

“Although I can absorb myself for whole hours in the fugues of Beethoven, Bach and Handel,” wrote Robert Schumann, “I have always maintained that nowadays no one can write a fugue which is anything but insipid, lukewarm, miserable and just patched together - until, that is, Mendelssohn’s reduced me to silence! If Bach were to rise from his tomb he would be happy to see that at least a few flowers have grown in the field where he planted such mighty oaks.” Schumann was right. None of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries, not even Schumann himself, was as successful in writing preludes and fugues after the Bach model while at the same time remaining true to himself.

One way in which Mendelssohn achieved such mastery as that demonstrated by the six Preludes and Fugues, Op.35, which were written at various times in the ten years up to their publication in 1837, was to secure some kind of continuity - expressive, technical or both - between the prelude and the fugue. In the case of the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, the fugue was written first, while the composer attended the sickbed of his dying friend August Hanstein in 1827. The Prelude in E minor is an appropriate introduction to a fugue conceived in such tragic circumstances, partly because of its emotional intensity and partly because its Allegro con fuoco tempo is the same as that attained after a sustained acceleration in the middle of the fugue. The prelude is also written in such a way as to preserve the secret of the surprise event held in reserve for the end of the fugue - a broad chorale in E major followed by a subdued echo of the fugue subject in the same consolatory key.

Much less often performed, the Prelude and Fugue in F minor have little or nothing in common apart from their tonality. Paradoxically, the relationship in this case is that one is a direct contrast to the other - an elegiac prelude which projects its melancholy melody against a regularly pulsating accompaniment and an exhilaratingly brilliant fugue based on a subject of inexhaustible rhythmic energy.