In addition to Mendelssohn’s remarkable, broad education in the liberal arts, he and Fanny studied music, of course. Their precociousness was recognized early on.\u00a0 \u00a0Young Felix began piano lessons at the age of six\u2014all four of the siblings studied piano.\u00a0\u00a0 The family\u2019s wealth and social position afforded them access to Europe\u2019s outstanding teachers and performers, and Felix and Fanny advanced with impressive abilities.\u00a0\u00a0 In addition to their piano studies the two siblings studied counterpoint and composition with a well-known scholar, and benefited immensely by a veritable immersion in the music of the Baroque and Classic periods, especially that of J. S. Bach and Mozart.\u00a0 Their compositional efforts began early, and an impressive stream of compositions poured forth by Felix\u2019s early teens, including the twelve \u201cstring symphonies.”<\/p>\n
His concerto for two pianos in E major was written in 1823, when the composer was fourteen, and was first performed by Fanny and him in December of that year at the home of their father, Abraham.\u00a0 It is his fourth essay in the concerto genre, having just finished three others in the previous year\u2019s time.\u00a0 He went on to compose a second concerto for two pianos the very next year.\u00a0\u00a0 Interestingly, the E major concerto enjoyed only two other performances for the rest of the century:\u00a0 six years later in London with his friend the great virtuoso, Ignaz Moscheles, and some thirty years later by two students of Moscheles.\u00a0 After that it lay unknown until 1950 when its manuscript was \u201crediscovered.\u201d<\/p>\n
The concerto obviously was conceived as a showpiece for the young siblings. Accordingly it is replete with the kinds of impressive virtuoso figurations that were becoming all the fashion at the time.\u00a0 While, today, Beethoven and Schubert\u2019s music from that decade dominates our concert stages, there were plenty of contemporaneous composers whose popular style was decidedly \u201cflashier\u201d and more concerned with wowing the listener than that of the two immortals.\u00a0 So, we should not be surprised that a young teenager, exercising his own skills as composer and performer, should be tempted somewhat in the latter direction.\u00a0 Both he and Fanny played exceptionally well, and the music shows it in the exuberant technical passages that a more mature composer would have pruned back a bit.\u00a0 The ghost of Mozart is surely looking over the composer\u2019s shoulder, and Mendelssohn admirably informs much of the work with the former\u2019s virtues.<\/p>\n
The concerto begins conventionally with an extended section for the orchestra alone, where most of the important material is heard\u2014not saving anything important for the soloists, as later became the norm.\u00a0\u00a0 The mood begins gently\u2014somewhat Mozartian, to be sure, but equally characteristic of the mature Mendelssohn, as well.\u00a0\u00a0 After some stormy moments in the minor mode, the soloists enter alone and somewhat pensively, but surely with a bit of the exhibitionist, too.\u00a0\u00a0 Mendelssohn is quite careful to divide the material equally with his sister, as they trade roulades and melodies in total equanimity.\u00a0 The opening section ends dramatically, as we might expect, in the dominant, b minor.\u00a0 But, the young Mendelssohn has already learned a thing or two, and the development begins most surprisingly in the rather romantic key of G major\u2014it\u2019s hard to miss; the solo pianos echo the cadenza-like rhetoric of their first entrance.\u00a0\u00a0 The return to the opening is heralded by a grand sustained chord, which leads to the spirited, animated charge to the end.<\/p>\n
The adagio central movement\u2014in a gentle, rocking 6\/8 time–brings to mind, if you will, not only the warm, gracious expansiveness that characterized elements in the composer\u2019s oratorios, such as Elijah<\/em>, but a bit of Chopin, as well.\u00a0\u00a0 Through it all, we remember the gift for melody familiar from his Songs without Words.<\/em> The last movement, as you might expect, is a romp, with all the dashing scales, arpeggios, and dizzy figurations that one desires.\u00a0\u00a0 There is more repetition than is usual in a typical concerto, but we have two virtuosos to please, and one\u2019s attention is more than arrested by their give and take as they take turns scampering along in a party that seems loathe to end.\u00a0 But end it must, and a mad dash of technical brilliance caps it off.\u00a0\u00a0 Years later, the mature Mendelssohn spent no small amount of time trying to tighten up the structure, eliminate redundancies, and \u201cmodernize\u201d it a bit\u2014but this first version documents a fourteen-year-old genius whose remarkable musical facility is completely convincing in what it portends.\u00a0 Forget its youthful indiscretions and enjoy!<\/p>\n –Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n \u00a9 2016 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[41],"class_list":["post-233","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-felixmendelssohn"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}