Felix Mendelssohn:
Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 49
Piano Sextet in D major, Op. 110
History has produced few musical geniuses who could rival the formidable precocity, versatility, and sheer intellectual acumen of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847). He won renown as a composer who bridged classicism and romanticism, as a “modern” conductor who was one of the first to use a baton, and as a pianist and organist whose improvisations were legendary. (He was also a skilled violinist and violist as well as a scholar and editor of the music of J. S. Bach and Handel.) The range and totality of his accomplishments, which extended to painting and drawing, and to poetry and the art of translation bear comparison to the intellectual breadth of the great polymaths, two of whom, Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt, he counted as intimate friends. The anni mirabiles of Mendelssohn’s early years are usually viewed as 1825 and 1826, when, at ages sixteen and seventeen, he produced two inimitable, breakthrough masterpieces, the Octet Op. 20 and Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream Op. 21, favorite, enduring works of the concert repertoire.
Scarcely less impressive, at least in quantity, was the productivity of the fifteen year old. On the occasion of his birthday on February 3, 1824, Mendelssohn’s composition teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, declared his prize pupil a journeyman in the brotherhood of J. S. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. A few days later, Mendelssohn premiered at the family residence in Berlin his fourth opera, Der Onkel aus Boston, and then proceeded to write a viola sonata and begin a symphony for full orchestra, eventually published in the 1830s as the Symphony in C minor, Op. 11 (it had been preceded by a series of twelve string sinfonias). In March he concluded a Salve Regina for soprano and string orchestra, before turning in April and May to the Piano Sextet in D major. Only the symphony Mendelssohn deemed worthy of publication; the sextet had to await a posthumous release in 1868 as Op. 110, the Salve Regina did not appear until late in the twentieth century, and Der Onkel aus Boston still remains unpublished, though its twenty-first century premiere was given as recently as 2005. Though none of these works attains the level of the Octet or Midsummer Night’s Dream of 1825 and 1826, they are significant for another reason, for they testify to the remarkable compositional range and fluency of the young prodigy. Indeed, only Mozart and Schubert attained comparable levels of expertise in as broad a selection of musical genres at such early ages.
The Sextet, recorded here, has always occupied a somewhat anomalous position in Mendelssohn’s early oeuvre. First, very little is known about its early compositional history--for example, about what stimulated its composition or, indeed, when it was first performed. Second, vexing questions remain as to why Mendelssohn chose the unusual genre of the piano sextet. And third, the work has always remained in the shadows of the much more celebrated Octet, the magnitude and compositional scope of which dwarfs its earlier sibling; in short, the Sextet is usually seen as a way station in Mendelssohn’s early maturity, a work pointing irretrievably to the Octet.
Mendelssohn’s letters are conspicuously silent about the Sextet, and the surviving autograph score (in the composer’s Nachlass at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), dated at the end May 10, 1824, yields few clues about the work’s gestation. It is a relatively clean manuscript, with few corrections that might betray details of the evolution of the work. Instead, we must rely on some other evidence to reconstruct the historical context in which the composition came to life. In particular, the scoring of the work, for one violin, two violas, cello, contrabass, and piano, may provide some insight. Mendelssohn has tipped the balance of the string ensemble toward the darker, lower registers of the violas, cello, and contrabass, a disposition that reinforces the bass line, and allows the piano to dominate through much of the composition, so that the Sextet resembles sometimes not so much a piece of chamber music as a piano concerto with string accompaniment. Mendelssohn’s scoring is somewhat reminiscent of Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s Septet in D minor, Op. 74, for flute, oboe, horn, viola, violoncello, double bass and piano. What is more, when this unusual work appeared in 1816, it was also issued in a quintet version for violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano, a scoring considerably closer to that of the Sextet.
A child prodigy himself and former pupil of Mozart, Hummel (1778-1837) had settled in 1819 in Weimar, where he served as Kapellmeister to the ducal court. One of the leading piano virtuosi and pedagogues of the time (his textbook, the Ausführlich theoretisch-practische Anweisung zum Piano-forte Spiel, 1825, ran to several editions and was widely translated), Hummel possessed a brilliant, pearly style of pianism reminiscent of Mozart, and yet was capable of producing powerfully dramatic piano works comparable to those of his contemporary Beethoven (in the 1830s Hummel’s imposing Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor would test the technical abilities of the aspiring pianist Robert Schumann). In 1821 Hummel’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 85 had served as the model for an early concerto by Mendelssohn in the same key; what is more, that year Mendelssohn had at least two opportunities to meet Hummel, first in Berlin, where Hummel attended a private performance of the twelve-year-old’s opera Die Soldatenliebschaft, and then in Weimar, where the boy had some finishing lessons with Hummel and met the poet Goethe. Not surprisingly, Hummel’s limpid, graceful style impressed itself upon the Sextet, as in the piano figuration of the first movement, which not infrequently features triplet scale-like patterns and arpeggiations in the upper register of the instrument. Also Hummelesque (and recalling Mozart) is the use of classically balanced phrases, as in the openings of the first two movements, in which eight-bar periods of the string quintet are answered by the piano. One other connection to Hummel is evident in the third-movement minuet, with its off-beat bass notes and agitated quality, which brings to mind more the character of a scherzo than a minuet, and in fact may be indebted to the demonic second movement of Hummel’s Septet, also in D minor, and marked, ambivalently, “Menuetto o Scherzo.”
If the conservatism of Mendelssohn’s composition teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, had predisposed the prodigy toward eighteenth-century models of Bach, Haydn, and Mozart, by 1824 he was also assimilating into his forming style more contemporary influences, of which Hummel was one. Another, ultimately more decisive influence was Beethoven. Zelter had professed to Goethe an admiration for Beethoven’s middle-period works, including the Egmont Overture and Wellington’s Victory; nevertheless, like many of his contemporaries, Zelter was unable to fathom the abstract beauties of the late-period works. Mendelssohn’s assessment of Beethoven seems to have begun in earnest in 1823 and 1824, when signs of Beethoven’s dramatic middle-period works began exerting their influence on the impressionable youth. For instance, Mendelssohn’s Symphony in C minor, Op. 11, composed just before the Sextet, is indebted on several counts to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (1808), also in C minor. As it happens, Op. 11 betrays a thematic link to the Sextet, for the principal theme of the slow movement (Adagio), in a luminous F-sharp major with muted strings, is suspiciously similar to that of the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s symphony. Now the subdued second theme of the Adagio, in which the pianist unfolds some chords against a repeated pedal point in the violas, may well have been inspired by a similar passage in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 (Tempest). Be that as it may, the finale of the Sextet reveals one incontrovertible borrowing from Beethoven through its use of a characteristically Beethovenian device--the dramatic interruption. Thus, well into the recapitulation of the sonata-form movement, Mendelssohn amasses a prolonged series of harmonies on the dominant, eventually reaching the dynamic level of triple forte (a level Beethoven had tested in his Eighth Symphony) before the rushing music spills over into a recall of the D-minor minuet, now pressed into service to form the coda of the work. Mendelssohn would have examined a similar device in the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the course of which is unexpectedly interrupted to permit a recall of the third movement. (It should be noted, Mendelssohn remained fond of the technique, and would reuse it in 1825 in the finale of his Octet.) Thus, the young Mendelssohn revealed himself a serious student not only of Hummel, but also of Beethoven, two sources of the stylistic mix that would yield Mendelssohn’s mature style.
Among the most impressive of Mendelssohn’s later chamber music is the Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 49, composed in the summer of 1839 and released by Breitkopf & Härtel early in 1840. This was the work that encouraged Robert Schumann to designate Mendelssohn the Mozart of the nineteenth century, and to generate a line of critical thought that viewed Mendelssohn paradoxically as a classic-romantic composer. Schumann found his friend and colleague to be the “most brilliant” of contemporary musicians who successfully reconciled in his music the “contradictions” of the time. Though Schumann did not identify those contradictions, the genesis of the trio and the composer’s letters may shed some light. Mendelssohn perceived keenly the incursions of virtuosity into modern concert life, and the danger that un-channeled technical display could compromise the integrity of the work of art. Thus, Mendelssohn’s own style of pianism, for all its brilliance, remained partly tethered to late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century traditions. While he admired Chopin and Liszt, he found Chopin’s mazurkas “mannered” and “hard to stand,” and Liszt, despite his technical perfection and command of the instrument, lacking in original compositional ideas. In 1840, not long after the appearance of Op. 49, Mendelssohn wrote, “Liszt’s whole performance is as unpremeditated, as wild and impetuous, as you would expect of a genius; but then I miss those genuinely original ideas which I naturally expect of a genius.” Needless to say, the lesser virtuosi then crisscrossing Europe and pandering fashionable fantasias, variations, and potpourris earned stronger rebukes from Mendelssohn, as they did from Schumann. Thus, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, the erstwhile teacher of Chopin, merited comparison to an “indigestible sausage,” and Mendelssohn anointed Henri Herz the “Semiquaver King.”
In his own piano music, Mendelssohn was keenly aware of a disparity between his aesthetic outlook, a distinctive blend of fanciful romanticism and graceful classicism, and the new piano culture of the virtuosi. Thus, in 1835, Mendelssohn confessed to the composer Ferdinand Hiller, “I have some new pianoforte things and shall shortly publish some of them. I always think of you and your warning whenever an old-fashioned passage comes into my head, and hope to get rid of such ideas.” The issue seems to have come to a critical stage with the composition of the D-minor Piano Trio, as Hiller later recalled in his memoirs. When, in 1839, Hiller heard the first draft of the trio, he found the keyboard part too traditional:
Certain pianoforte passages in it, constructed on broken chords, seemed to me—to speak candidly—somewhat old-fashioned. I had lived many years in Paris, seeing Liszt frequently, and Chopin every day, so that I was thoroughly accustomed to the richness of passages which marked the new pianoforte school. I made some observations to Mendelssohn on this point, suggesting certain alterations, but at first he would not listen to me. “Do you think that that would make the thing any better?” He said, “The piece would be the same, and so it may remain as it is.” “But,” I answered, “you have often told me . . . that the smallest touch of the brush, which might conduce to the perfection of the whole, must not be despised. An unusual form of arpeggio may not improve the harmony, but neither does it spoil it—and it becomes more interesting to the player.” We discussed it and tried it on the piano over and over again, and I enjoyed the small triumph of at last
getting Mendelssohn over to my view.
Thus prodded by Hiller, Mendelssohn rewrote the piano part, and “updated” its figurations, without, however, altering substantially the thematic content or formal design of the work.
The Trio is in four movements, the first three of which convey three contrasting moods. The brooding Molto allegro agitato (D minor) introduces in the cello and violin, against restless syncopations in the piano, a haunting, ascending theme that unfolds from a series of expanding leaps. Throughout the movement the sense of agitation is reinforced by accents off the downbeat, and by a restless rhythmic accompaniment of triplets, of murmuring eighths for the second theme, and by accelerated triplets (assai animato) for the dramatic coda. Contrasting with the Angst of the first movement is the song-like beauty of the slow movement (Andante con moto tranquillo, B-flat major), which begins as a solo Lied ohne Worte for the piano, answered by duetting strings. The middle portion of the movement, with its turn to the parallel minor key, reintroduces with repetitive triplet chords a distant sense of unease or romantic yearning. But the magical bridge to the opening material, with gently undulating sixteenth-note arpeggiations in the piano, restores the tranquil song-like theme, so that the movement closes in a placid pianissimo.
By the 1830s Mendelssohn had established a distinctive, puckish brand of scherzo as an integral component of his style, and in the brisk, mercurial third movement of his piano trio (Leggiero e vivace, D major) he did not disappoint. The playful, unpredictable quality of the movement is established at the very outset with an irregular seven-bar theme in the piano that divides unevenly into three and four bars. Fancy and caprice reign throughout this movement, which, unlike the more conventional sonata form and ternary song form of the first two movements, requires its own type of rondo form (ABACABCA’). Mendelssohn experimented with a similar form in the finale (Allegro assai appassionato, D minor, concluding in D major) that draws together, like a summary, the distinctive properties of the first three movements. Thus the subdued yet restless opening, comes to an unexpected and destabilizing pause without securing the tonic key, and then yields to a dramatic explosion that recalls the agitation of the first movement. Toward the middle of the finale, the cello introduces a new, cantabile theme that reasserts the key and character of the slow movement. And in the final turn to the tonic major, marked pp leggiero e assai animato, Mendelssohn intimates the D-major scherzo before the jubilant close of the work.
--R. Larry Todd
R. Larry Todd (Arts & Sciences Professor of Music, Duke University) is author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, named best biography of 2003 by the American Association of Publishers.
Conrad Graf's Grand Piano, Opus 2148
The foremost piano builder in Vienna in the early 19th century was Conrad Graf. A perfectionist and master craftsman, Graf was at once a successful businessman, a patron of the arts, a collector of contemporary paintings, and certainly one of the most intriguing figures of Biedermeier Vienna. His reputation as the finest among many excellent instrument makers in Vienna is substantiated in contemporary sources. In 1836 Gustav Schilling wrote in the Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst: "Graf's instruments are not only the most sought after on the continent, but are also shipped overseas and are heard, moreover, in other hemispheres. His instruments have earned a reputation for their noteworthy solidity and stability of tuning, along with their sonorous and powerful tone."
Many of Graf's instruments have survived to the present day, owing to their unique, extraordinarily stable design. Although they lack even a partial metal frame, an interior construction of laminated, interlocking oak braces has enabled them to withstand more than a century of string tension without twisting or buckling. The grand piano, Opus 2148, was found in Sweden by Edward Swenson of Trumansburg, NY, who, with the help of his colleague Robert Murphy, spent two years restoring it. The beauty of the cabinet work and the extensive gilded brass decoration suggest that the instrument may have been made for a noble family. Although unplayable at the time of its discovery, the instrument still had most of its original strings, tuning pins, leather hammers, and dampers.
The piano is triple-strung (three strings per hammer) throughout most of its six-and-a-half-octave range. The case design and label suggest that the piano was built around 1835, toward the end of Graf's middle period of work, just before he won the gold medal in the first Austrian industrial products exhibition. (From December of 1835 on, the soundboards of his instruments bore printed and signed labels celebrating this triumph.) Most of Graf's pianos of this period, Opus 2148 included, were equipped with four pedals: one to raise the dampers, one to shift the keyboard so that the hammers struck only one or two, rather than all three strings, and two "moderator" pedals, which placed a single or double strip of felt between the hammers and strings, creating a soft and unusual timbre.
Edward E. Swenson (Trumansburg, NY)
Penelope Crawford – fortepiano
Internationally acclaimed as one of America's master performers on historical keyboard instruments, Penelope Crawford has appeared as soloist with modern and period instrument orchestras, and as recitalist and chamber musician throughout North America. From 1975 to 1990 she was harpsichordist and fortepianist with the Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, one of the first period instrument ensembles in North America.
Ms. Crawford teaches a doctoral seminar in piano performance practices of the 18th and 19th centuries at the University of Michigan. She also taught for twenty-five years on the artist faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. In an effort to establish stronger connections between performance and scholarship, she has served as artistic planner and performing participant in several important international festivals and scholarly conferences: Händel's Messiah: History & Performance (1980, Michigan); Michigan MozartFest, (1989, Michigan); Schubert's Piano Music, (1995, Washington D. C.); and Beyond Notation: The Performance and Pedagogy of Improvisation in Mozart’s Music, (2002, Michigan).
In addition to her work with the Atlantis Trio she has recorded for Musica Omnia Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise with Dutch baritone, Max van Egmond. Her other recordings of solo and chamber music have appeared on the Loft, Wild Boar, and Titanic labels.
Jaap Schröder – violin
Jaap Schröder, distinguished Dutch violinist and musical pedagogue, has enjoyed a multi-faceted career: quartet player, baroque violinist, soloist, conductor and teacher. He has long been engaged in research into violin literature of the 17th and 18th centuries and was one of the international pioneers in the founding of ensembles to perform in historically appropriate playing styles, notably with Quadro Amsterdam and Concerto Amsterdam.
As a soloist, Mr. Schröder has recorded repertoire ranging from works by Biber, through the
J .S. Bach solo suites and sonatas, to the complete violin cycle of Beethoven for such labels as Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics and Smithsonian. He has directed concerts and recordings on both sides of the Atlantic of such prestigious ensembles as the Academy of Ancient Music and the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra.
As a chamber musician he has founded several ensembles including the Smithson Quartet, Quartetto Esterhazy, and the Atlantis Trio & Atlantis Ensemble. His recordings have won many awards including a Grammy nomination. Mr. Schröder has taught on the faculties of the Yale School of Music and the Luxembourg Conservatory, and is frequently invited as a visiting performer-scholar to other universities and music conservatories in America and Europe.
Peter Bucknell – viola
Peter Bucknell recently retired from his position as the viola professor at the Crane School of music (State University of New York at Potsdam) to live in New York City.
In 1992, he won the Auckland International Viola Congress Competition and the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award. He worked with Donald McInnes in Los Angeles, with Rainer Moog in Cologne, Germany, and with Yuri Bashmet in Siena, Italy.
Peter Bucknell has been a soloist with Apollo's Fire, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Les Concerts du Monde, Los Angeles Musica Viva, and Melbourne's Geminiani Chamber Orchestra (broadcasting live the Australian Premiere of Michael Colgrass' "Chaconne" for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation). He has given recitals in the United States, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.
As a member of the award-winning Quatour Danel, Peter Bucknell has performed at
Wigmore Hall, Grange de Meslay, Radio France and in many other European halls, specializing in the quartets of Shostakovich. He toured with the Stradivari Sextet, where he played the 'Mahler Stradivarius' Another of his Quartets won the Interpretation Prize in the Osaka Competition in 1996.
Daniel Foster – viola
Daniel Foster has taught violin at Eastern Michigan University since 1987. A student of Paul Rolland at the University of Illinois and of Angel Reyes at the University of Michigan, he holds degrees in violin performance from both schools. Since 1978, he has appeared frequently throughout the United States as a solo and chamber artist, with
repertoire ranging from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. As a baroque violinist and violist, he has performed and recorded with Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Oriana, and Tafelmusik.
He is also a current and founding member of La Gente d’Orfeo, a quartet for violin, cornetto, cello and early keyboards, specializing in Italian music of the early 17th century. He currently serves as concertmaster of the Macomb Symphony, under Thomas Cook, and is a founding member of the Red Hot Lava Chamber Music Festival in Honolulu, and of the Alexander Trio, the faculty piano trio at Eastern Michigan University. His teaching includes emphasis on musical values and expression, cultivation of free physical movements, and enhancement of the mind/body connection.
Enid Sutherland – cello
Enid Sutherland, cellist, violist da gamba, and composer, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in cello and composition at the University of Michigan. Her long career as a performer, teacher, and student of historical performances practices has taken her on a musical journey from the music of the Renaissance through that of the early Romantics.
She attracts students from all over the country to her studio in Ann Arbor. In addition to her many solo performances, she has performed with a number of ensembles, including the Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, the New Baroque Trio, Musicke of Sundrie Kindes, the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, the Ensemble for Early Music of New York, Apollo’s Fire of Cleveland, Tafelmusik of Toronto, the Atlantis Trio & Ensemble, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
As a composer, Enid Sutherland has written numerous works in modern idioms for small to medium mixed ensembles, solo pieces for various instruments, two song cycles, duos for violin and cello, two harpsichords, and harpsichord and piano, and one opera. She has received several commissions, and her works have been performed across the United States and in Europe. She has also been awarded grants for her work from the Ford Motor Company, the University of Michigan, and the American Music Center.
Anne Trout – double bass
Bassist Anne Trout is active as a chamber music performer and orchestral musician throughout North America, appearing with prominent ensembles sized 5 to 50. In Boston she has served as a principal player for the Handel & Haydn Society, the Boston Bach Ensemble, and Boston Baroque. Well-known as a continuo player and sympathetic collaborator, she is often engaged to accompany vocalists of international stature. She performs regularly with REBEL, the New York-based chamber ensemble, in its residency at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan and its national tours. A long-time member of the Musicians of Aston Magna, she has also performed with the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Cabrillo Festival, Colorado Music Festival, Montreal Bach Festival, Jonathan Miller's staged "St Matthew Passion" at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Philadelphia-based Tempesta di Mare, the Cambridge-based Sarasa Ensemble. Ms. Trout serves on the faculties of the Groton School, Boston College, and Longy School in Cambridge.
Instrument: Double bass, Anon Tyrolean, c.1840
The Atlantis Trio and Atlantis Ensemble
The Atlantis Trio, comprising Jaap Schröder (violin), Penelope Crawford (fortepiano) and Enid Sutherland (cello), specializes in the Classical and Romantic piano trio literature on period instruments. The group has performed widely throughout North America, including concerts at the Smithsonian’s and the Westfield Center’s co-sponsored festival Schubert’s Piano Music in Washington D. C., the Haydn Festival in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Helicon series in New York City, the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as numerous live broadcasts on National Public Radio. For Musica Omnia the Atlantis Trio and the augmented Atlantis Ensemble are engaged in a major project documenting the great Romantic chamber repertoire for piano and strings, including all the major works in this genre by Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Sigismond Thalberg, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Clara Schumann & Fanny Mendelssohn. The Atlantis Trio and Atlantis Ensemble are also involved in a series of recordings of the complete chamber works for piano and strings by Felix Mendelssohn, in honour of that composer’s upcoming bicentennial in 2009. For the Mendelssohn Sextet, the trio is augmented by Peter Bucknell, Daniel Foster (viola) and Anne Trout (double bass).
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