MENDELSSOHN STRING QUARTETS
Consone Quartet
St Marie's Cathedral, Sheffield
Saturday 15 March 2025, 3.00pm
Tickets:
£17
£10 UC, PIP & DLA
£5 Students & Under 35s

MENDELSSOHN
String Quartet in D Op.44 No.1 (32’)
Fuga from Four Pieces Op.81 (5’)
String Quartet in A minor Op.13 (30’)
Music in the Round’s Visiting String Quartet returns to Sheffield for its final immersive afternoon and evening of concerts exploring the music of Felix Mendelssohn. Here, the composer’s passionate String Quartet No.1 (written when he was just 18 years old – and newly in love) is presented alongside his String Quartet No.3, a composition full of light and levity.
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MENDELSSOHN Felix, String Quartet in D Op.44 No.1
Molto allegro vivace
Menuetto. Un poco Allegretto
Andante espressivo ma con moto
Presto con brio
Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud in 1837 and it was under the influence of this blissfully happy time in his life that he returned to the string quartet for the first time in almost ten years. During their honeymoon he composed the Quartet in E minor published as Op.44 No.2, to which two companion pieces were added in 1838: the Quartet in E flat Op.44 No.3 and the present Quartet in D major – published as the first of the set, but actually the last of the three to be completed, started in April 1838, but not finished until 24 July. It is a work that recaptures something of the untroubled rapture of the much earlier Octet, but almost as soon as the ink was dry on the new quartet, Mendelssohn and his wife succumbed to the measles epidemic that was sweeping through Leipzig at the time. As a result of this illness, Mendelssohn was unable to conduct his scheduled concerts in September, and it was not until October that he was able to resume his duties as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts.
The first movement of the D major Quartet opens with a soaring, joyful theme that seems reminiscent of the Octet, though within a more restrained and consciously Classical framework. For the only time in his quartets Mendelssohn wrote a Minuet as the second movement. This elegantly-crafted piece is perhaps an indication of the more refined but less progressive approach of his music at the time, something that the Mendelssohn biographer Eric Werner attributed to the composer’s domestic bliss, and his ‘wish to please and impress Cécile.’ Werner went so far as to suggest that this ‘weakened his artistic integrity’, a claim that seems to be firmly contradicted by the effectiveness of the D major Quartet. The Andante espressivo is a gentle interlude before the exciting finale: launched with a tremendous energy that is sustained almost throughout and which brings the work to a rousing conclusion. The first performance was given from the composer’s manuscript on 16 February 1839 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, played by a quartet led by Ferdinand David. Schumann described the character of his friend Mendelssohn’s music of this period with typical perceptiveness: ‘A smile hovers round his mouth, but it is that of delight in his art, of quiet self-sufficiency in an intimate circle.’
Nigel Simeone © 2011
MENDELSSOHN Felix, Fugue from Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81, No. 4
The high opus number of Mendelssohn’s Fugue in E flat major is misleading. The four pieces were published after the composer’s death and he never intended them to be grouped together, not least because they were written twenty years apart. The Fugue is the earliest, composed in 1827, when Mendelssohn was 18 years old. It opens with the subject on the viola, answered in turn by the second violin, then the first and finally the cello. Mendelssohn’s astonishing gifts were already fully apparent from even earlier works (above all in the Octet), but this Fugue is a remarkable demonstration of his effortless handling of counterpoint and fugal technique. It is also an important reminder of the impact which the late Beethoven quartets had on the younger man: understandably, he was awe-struck by Beethoven’s reinvention of fugal writing in these works and became obsessed with them. While Mendelssohn’s fugue is less overtly dramatic than any of Beethoven’s – in fact it is rather elegant – the idea of this piece being a kind of homage to Mendelssohn’s musical gods of Bach and Beethoven is surely not far-fetched.
Nigel Simeone 2024
MENDELSSOHN Felix, String Quartet Op.13 (1827)
Adagio – Allegro vivace
Adagio non lento
Intermezzo. Allegretto con moto – Allegro di molto
Presto – Adagio non lento
Mendelssohn composed this quartet in 1827, while he was still in his teens but two years after the Octet. Written just months after the death of Beethoven, the work heavily influenced by Beethoven’s late quartets which so fascinated the young Mendelssohn at the same time as they shocked and appalled many of his older contemporaries. The A minor Quartet opens with a slow introduction that quotes from a Mendelssohn song (“Ist es wahr?” – “Is it true?” – an echo of Beethoven’s “Muss es sein?” in Op.135). The three-note motif that Mendelssohn derives from his song reappears in all four movements. After the drama of the first movement and the Adagio with its stern central fugal section, the Intermezzo brings us closer to the world of the Octet’s Scherzo or the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream that dates from the same period. The finale is modelled directly on the finale of Beethoven’s Op.132 Quartet, also in A minor. After an unusual violin cadenza over a tremolo accompaniment, the main part of the movement is driving and passionate, its main themes owing much to Beethoven’s example, until Mendelssohn – in a daring move – dissolves the musical action before a brief concluding Adagio where the “Ist es wahr?” music from the start makes a poignant return.
Nigel Simeone © 2012