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These pages contain program notes written for Redwood
Symphony. You are free to use the information in your own program
notes. If you quote me directly, please attribute it. Thanks!
These notes were edited, amended, and otherwise
improved by Eric Kujawsky, Peter Stahl, and Doug Wyatt.
Barbara Heninger
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Felix Mendelssohn
Piano Concerto in G minor
It can be debated which composer was the greater child prodigy -- Mozart or
Mendelssohn -- but though their early output was similar in size, surely no
composer other than Mendelssohn can claim as many "mature" works
produced while still in his teens. Several of the string symphonies he wrote at
age 12 are still played today; with the String Octet (1825) at age 16 and the
incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) at age 17, Mendelssohn
established himself early as one of the most gifted composers of his time.
Yet he was still a young man with a young man's fancies, and while visiting
Munich in 1831 he found himself making "sheep's eyes" (as he put it)
at Delphine von Schauroth, a baroness's daughter. The 22-year-old Mendelssohn
wrote to his beloved sister Fanny that everyone "adored" Delphine:
"Ministers and counts trot around her like domestic animals in the hen
yard." Within three days Mendelssohn had composed most of the particulars
of the piano concerto, working in the mornings before and after visiting
Delphine. He even told Fanny that his muse had "composed a passage ... that
makes a startling effect," but never specified which one. Mendelssohn
premiered the piece himself to great success in Munich on October 17. Franz
Lizst later made the concerto so popular that Hector Berlioz, in his Evenings
with the Orchestra, described a particular Érard piano that had been subjected
to the work so many times that it refused to quit playing the concerto until
chopped into pieces and burned.
The concerto is compact, dispensing with lengthy orchestral introductions and
solo cadenzas, and built with cleverly interlocking motifs and a spareness of
form that substitutes a single shared exposition between orchestra and soloist
for the traditional double exposition (orchestra introducing a theme that is
then restated by the solo). The writing is virtuosic but emotionally direct. As
modern pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet describes it: "Every time I approach a
piece of his ... it is as though I have been playing it for years. It's not
always easy to find the right expression immediately, but Mendelssohn writes his
music for the piano with the performer in mind."
The first movement, Molto allegro con fuoco, begins with rushing chromatic
chords from the orchestra, quickly taken up by the piano and spun by the full
ensemble into an urgent, breathless theme. The piano passages grow increasingly
virtuosic, but then segue into a calmer, lyrical second theme. The two themes
develop rhapsodically until the violins, violas, and oboes sound a rhythmic
four-note pattern, still in G minor, that trumpets and horns transform into a
fanfare in E major. This fanfare provides Mendelssohn's connecting device
between each of the movements. The piano echoes and slows the repeated notes,
leading without pause into the Andante second movement. Violas and cellos first
state the poignant theme, then the piano expands upon their gentle, song-like
melody. The movement ultimately fades to a silence abruptly broken by the return
of the fanfare, announcing the rondo finale, Presto. The piano introduces this
ebullient G-major theme, complemented by an orchestral part that, though a bit
less virtuosic, is no less brilliant. Just before the finale's close,
Mendelssohn recalls the lyrical second theme of the first movement, thus tying
his final knot between the movements, then ends with a flourish.
February 23, 2003
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