Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: The Piano Trios

Description

At the age of 23, many young people have ambitious dreams, fewer have clear plans, and still fewer will see them realized. At 23, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had already achieved a number of goals, each of which would fulfil a musician’s life. He had already written an unforgettable masterpiece such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream; he had conducted and rediscovered Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion; he had an outstanding culture and an amiable personality.
However, of course, he still had many projects. And, at 23, he wrote to his beloved sister, Fanny: “I should like to compose a couple of good trios”. And two “good” – or rather magnificent – piano trios he would write.
Indeed, this extraordinarily precocious child prodigy had already written a work for piano, violin and cello, at the age of only 11; curiously, this Trio (which has not been preserved) was in the same key (C minor) as the second published trio he would write.
The project remained in the back of his mind for some years. When Mendelssohn turned 29, in 1838, the idea was still a form of wishful thinking: as he wrote to one of his best friends, the pianist and composer Ferdinand Hiller, it was his intention to do something in the field of chamber music for piano and strings, since he felt that the contemporaneous repertoire for such ensembles was somewhat thin.
During February of the following year, 1839, the idea started to take flesh, in the form of some preliminary drafts for the D-minor Piano Trio, op. 49, sketched in Leipzig; in March, Mendelssohn conducted another epoch-making premiere, that of Schubert’s C-major Symphony (“The Great”), which his friend Robert Schumann had fortunately rescued from oblivion. The composer spent the remainder of that spring in Frankfurt and Rhineland, together with his family, and, on that occasion, he dedicated himself to the composition of the Trio.
When the work was finished, he played it for his friend Hiller, who later recalled his first impressions: “Mendelssohn had just finished his great D minor trio, and played it to me. I was tremendously impressed by the fire and spirit, the flow, and, in short, the masterly character of the whole thing. But I had one small misgiving. 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”. In fact, Mendelssohn reportedly asked Hiller: “Do you think that that would make the thing any better? […] The piece would be the same, and so it may remain as it is”. The composer’s reaction puzzled Hiller, who knew him to be a painstakingly fastidious and careful artist. “You have often told me”, said Hiller to Mendelssohn, “and proved to me by your actions, 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 performer”.
Hiller’s appeal to Mendelssohn’s artistic conscience was not lost: “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. With his usual conscientious earnestness when once he had made up his mind about a thing, he now undertook the lengthy, not to say wearisome, task of rewriting the whole pianoforte part. One day, when I found him working at it, he played me a bit which he had worked out exactly as I had suggested to him on the piano, and called out to me, ‘That is to remain as a remembrance of you.’ Afterwards, when he had been playing it at a chamber concert with all his wonderful fire, and had carried away the whole audience, he said, ‘I really enjoy that piece; it is honest music after all, and the players will like it, because they can show off with it.’ And so it proved”. Indeed, the piece obtained an immediate success, which would deservedly continue to present-day. It did please the performing musicians, it pleased the audiences, and it enthused critics of the standing of Robert Schumann. The premiere took place on February 1st, 1840, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with such excellent performers as violinist Ferdinand David (who was Mendelssohn’s concert master and who would be the soloist at the premiere of Mendelssohn’s exquisite violin concerto), cellist Carl Wittmann, and the composer himself at the piano. Schumann wrote a review of the score when it was published by Breitkopf and Härtel, and no doubt is possible as to his appreciation of the work: “This is the master-trio of the present day, as in their day were those of Beethoven in B flat [‘Archduke’] and D [‘Ghost’]”; Schumann also prophetically foresaw that this “exceedingly fine composition […], years hence, will still delight our grandchildren and great-grandchildren”. For Schumann, the Trio was “a new proof of its creator’s artistic power, which now appears to have reached its fullest bloom”, and which was likened to that of another great master of the past: Mendelssohn was “the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the most brilliant musician”, though he also was the composer “who looks most clearly through the contradictions of the present, and who for the first time reconciles them”.
As frequently happened, Schumann had understood the special quality of Mendelssohn’s music: it achieves, almost miraculously, an extremely difficult balance between the passionate, lyrical and sometimes stormy Romanticism of the era, and the architectural elegance of the past. One has not to seek far to discover abundant evidence for both elements: the first movement overflows with the strings’ vibrant melodies and the piano’s rousing and virtuoso figurations; while Mendelssohn’s absolute mastery of the contrapuntal techniques is constantly evident though never flaunted. Indeed, both his music and his personality eschewed the boasting attitude of many self-styling virtuosos of the time. A delightful anecdote relating to a later performance of the D-minor Trio proves this easily. In 1844, Mendelssohn had to perform his own work once more in England, but, on that occasion, the violin part would be played by another child-prodigy, Joseph Joachim, who was just thirteen. As the story has it, when the concert was about to begin, the pianist’s score was nowhere to be found. This was not a major problem: the composer could play it by memory. However, in order not to outshine his young companion, Mendelssohn reportedly said: “Never mind, put any book on the piano, and someone can turn from time to time, so that I need not look as though I play by heart”. Joachim, to whom we owe the anecdote, commented: “Nowadays, when people put so much importance on playing or conducting without book, I think this might be considered a good moral lesson of a great musician’s modesty”.
One year after the performance with Joachim, Mendelssohn set himself to work in order to fulfil his youthful intention: the Piano Trio in C minor was composed in 1845, and its autograph was later given as a present to Fanny, Felix’ sister who had first heard of his plan. While this present somehow acknowledged Fanny’s role as Felix’ trusted ally, perceptive critic and keen supporter, the official dedicatee was another composer, Louis Spohr.
With his usual modesty, Felix accompanied this princely homage with an almost apologetic understatement: “I would like to have saved the honour for a somewhat longer piece, but then I should have had to put it off, as I have so often of late. Nothing seemed good enough to me, and in fact neither does this trio”.
The work was premiered by the same performers who had first played the other trio, on December 20th, 1845, and it was published soon and internationally. The composer himself acknowledged the complexity of its technical demands, writing, once more, to his sister Fanny: “The trio is rather beastly to play, but it isn’t really hard: seek and ye shall find”.
The Gospel allusion found in this quote is a reminder that a religious dimension is rarely missing from Mendelssohn’s music. In fact, listeners familiar with Mendelssohn’s most famous works will easily recognize in these Trios some quintessential traits of his writing: the fairy, enchanted style of the Scherzos, the instrumental cantilenas similar to the Songs without words in the slow movements, the use of virtuosity always in the service of musical ideas, and, most notably, the presence of Chorale quotes and allusions in the second Trio’s last movement. For Mendelssohn, Bach represented a model not only in musical terms, but also as a person whose immense musical gifts had been devoted to spiritual purposes. Thus, the Baroque-inspired style of this Finale, with its homage to Bach’s Gigues, is also a tribute to the Lutheran musical tradition; the Chorales whose tunes are suggested, rather than properly quoted, here and there, seem to allude to the glory of God (Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir; Gelobest seist du) and to the creative musician’s reverence to the Creator (Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit, which was also the last Chorale set to music by Bach). This fulfilment is the perfect crowning for Mendelssohn’s artistic efforts in giving to the musical world much more than the “couple of good trios” he had aimed at writing.
Album Notes by Chiara Bertoglio