The following are Program Notes for the Zukerman ChamberPlayers: Music from the House of Mendelssohn concert with cellist Carter Brey at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday, March 16.

MENDELSSOHN: String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87
Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809 and died in Leipzig in 1847. He composed the String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87, in 1845.

Felix Mendelssohn, even by comparison with such famous virtuoso contemporaries as Liszt and Paganini, had probably the most successful musical career of his era. Universally admired as a composer, pianist, conductor, organist and music director, Mendelssohn traveled far and wide to fulfill commissions for composition and performances. Furthermore, he fulfilled the demanding obligations of a loving son, brother and father to his many family members, and of a devoted husband to his wife, Cécile, whom he married in 1837. One of his biographers, George Marek, wrote that “a conscientious chronicle of Mendelssohn’s next few years would merely weary the reader. It would link work with more work, string success after success, place tribute next to tribute, and enumerate an ever larger register of acquaintances and friends.”

In 1845, on hiatus from the demanding music directorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, orchestra Mendelssohn attempted to recharge his energies at his home in the Frankfurt area spa city of Bad Soden. He even turned down a tempting (musically and financially) invitation by Ureli Corelli Hill, president of the newly formed New York Philharmonic Society, to visit New York. Hill proposed to assemble an orchestra of 250 members and chorus of 500 singers for a “Grand Musical Festival,” at which Mendelssohn should serve as “musical missionary” to the cause of the developing music culture of the United States. In declining, the composer wrote tactfully to Hill his regrets that “…a journey like that to your country, which I would have been most happy to undertake some three or four years ago, is at present beyond my reach.” Mendelssohn admitted to his brother, Paul, that such a journey at this time would be “no more possible than a trip to the moon.”

Even in his relatively tired state, Mendelssohn continued to compose. Most notably, he began work on Elijah; he also wrote a Symphony in C Major, finished the score for Oedipus at Colonos and produced two major works of chamber music. The Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, was published early in 1846 as Op. 66. The other major chamber work, his second String Quintet, was finished on July 8, 1845.

Mendelssohn signed and dated the Quintet, but he reported to his friend Ignaz Moscheles (composer, conductor and pianist) his dissatisfaction with its exuberant finale. (Mendelssohn was habitually self-critical and particularly demanding of his writing for violin.) That he withheld publication of the work suggests that Mendelssohn intended to rework portions of the last movement, but such a rewrite never took place, and the String Quintet in B-flat was published posthumously as Op. 87. Mendelssohn’s reason for writing his Second Quintet remains obscure. No record has emerged that he ever performed it, nor did he give it a dedication.

Like Mozart, Mendelssohn scored his string quintets for a complement of traditional string quartet plus viola—as compared to Schubert’s C Major Quintet, which employs a second cello in place of the extra viola. Hearing substantial examples of both forms of string quintet writing back-to-back, as they are programmed on the present concert, affords an excellent opportunity to compare the effects of doubled violas vs. doubled cellos. Even allowing for the idiosyncratic writing of the two composers, we can hear that the extra upper voice of the alto viola weights the balance of instruments toward the treble in Mendelssohn’s Quintet; in addition, the fundamental textures and timbre of the two quintets differ noticeably because of the contrast between the sonorities of viola and cello.

Mendelssohn composed the work in a classic four-movement arrangement of two allegro movements framing a scherzo and a slow movement. The first movement, Allegro vivace, opens with élan, reminiscent of the spirit of the Octet. The second movement, Andante scherzando, suggests a more subtle joke than the vibrant scherzos that we usually expect from Mendelssohn. This relatively sedate intermezzo gives way to a finely etched and emotionally intimate Adagio e lento, the real heart of this Quintet. The final Allegro molto vivace completes the work with a bustling energy propelled particularly by the upper strings, including the tandem violas.

SCHUBERT: String Quintet in C Major, D. 956
Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797 and died there in 1828. He composed the String Quintet in C Major, D. 956, in 1828.

Because musical quality resists quick analysis, we often fall back upon quantity as a way of understanding a composer’s achievements. So with Schubert: by the time of his 31st birthday, in January 1828, Schubert’s compositions numbered in the hundreds—solo songs, symphonies, string quartets and other chamber works, large- and small-scale piano compositions, stage works, masses, cantatas, part songs and choruses. In 1827, when a young musician admiringly asked him how he could compose so much, Schubert is said to have answered, “When I have finished one piece, I start on the next one.”

Think now about what Schubert started and finished during only two months, September and October 1828:

Three movements of Symphony No. 10, D. 936a
String Quintet in C, D. 956
Piano Sonata in C minor, D. 958
Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 959
Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960
Benedictus in A minor for soloists, chorus and orchestra, D. 961
Tantum ergo in E-flat Major for soloists, chorus and orchestra, D. 962
Offertory: Intende voci for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra, D. 963
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen for soprano solo, clarinet and piano, D. 965
Songs of Schwanengesang, D.957, specifically “Die Taubenpost,” D. 965a

First, concentrate on these works in all their individual beauty and complexity. Then imagine this: Schubert was so physically ill during their composition that the following month, November, at the age of 31, he died.

Although too sick to carry out travel plans during his final weeks, Schubert did attend a party on September 27 at which he performed all three of his glorious new piano sonatas. A few days later, on October 2, Schubert wrote to a friend: “I have finally turned out a Quintet…[which] will have its first rehearsal one of these days.” Of his other activities during his final few weeks, we know relatively little. Probably his hoped-for Quintet rehearsal did not take place.

Two weeks before he died, Schubert began to attend a series of counterpoint lessons with Vienna’s leading music theory professor, Simon Sechter. Despite his abundant skills and successes, Schubert still strove to improve his composition technique. Listening to the masterful voice-leading and part-writing in the Quintet, which he had just completed, we marvel at Schubert’s determination to understand his craft even more deeply and to fly even higher in his art. In any event, he had only one lesson with Sechter. On November 12 he wrote his last letter, to his friend Franz von Schober. A week later, while correcting the final proofs of Winterreise, Schubert left this world.

The Quintet stands alone in Schubert’s works, and in the great body of chamber music repertoire of the past three centuries, as a unique beacon of beauty and complexity. Adding a second cello to the standard string quartet, Schubert created inner voices of great expressivity, with the wide-ranging cello frequently soaring above the viola, leaving its companion to anchor the whole with its rich tenor/baritone voice.

Hearing the Quintet erases any notions that the key of C Major might constitute a plain-vanilla experience. Schubert’s introductory tonic chord swells immediately to a diminished seventh, and the first movement develops thence through a head-spinning range of keys—D minor, E minor, E-flat Major, G Major, A-flat Major, F Major—exploring, along the way, contrasting musical territories of supreme lyricism, agitation and serenity, before finding its conclusion in C Major.

Echoes of the great B-flat Piano Sonata haunt the second movement of the Quintet; it glows with an ethereal texture similar to that Sonata’s Andante. The five instruments sustain the nocturnal mood of the Adagio, as the three inner voices move in serene counterpoint laced by the voices of the second cello and the first violin. The movement’s exquisite opening section, in E Major, is interrupted by a dramatic outburst that features a passionate duet for violin and cello. The drama subsides in C Major and the movement ends, after an enchanted transition back to E Major, with a reprise of the suspended serenade.

A raucous scherzo follows, with a startlingly somber Trio; the Quintet concludes with an exuberant Allegretto filled with peasant humor, surprising harmonic modulations and frequent changes of mood. The third and fourth movements depart from and return to the tonic key of C Major, a C Major that Schubert infused throughout the Quintet with all of life’s passions and complexities, beauties and sorrows.

The publishing house Diabelli purchased the Quintet autograph manuscript from Schubert’s brother, Ferdinand, in 1829. In 1850, Diabelli provided the string parts for the first public performance of the Quintet by Josef Hellmesberger’s quartet and cellist Josef Stransky, at the Musikverein in Vienna. The full score finally appeared in 1853.

© 2008 by Sandra Hyslop