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