Mendelssohn - The String Quintets
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Label: Chandos
Cat No: CHAN20218
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 25th February 2022
Contents
Artists
Doric String QuartetTimothy Ridout (viola)
Works
String Quintet no.1 in A major, op.18String Quintet no.2 in B flat major, op.87
Artists
Doric String QuartetTimothy Ridout (viola)
About
The Doric String Quartet is firmly established as one of the leading quartets of its generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics around the globe. Following their acclaimed recordings of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, here the quartet is joined by leading violist Timothy Ridout for an album of Mendelssohn’s two String Quintets. These were written at the beginning and end of his short but remarkable compositional life. Mendelssohn composed No.1 in 1826, shortly before the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, when he was just seventeen. No.2 was written in 1845, when he was thirty-six, a year before the première of Elijah and just two years before his death.
‘As in the previous edition, the four musicians remain true to themselves and let us hear a different Mendelssohn than we are used to.’ – **** Pizzicato (CHAN20257)
‘An impressive new addition to the Mendelssohn discography’ – Gramophone (CHAN20122)
‘An impressive new addition to the Mendelssohn discography’ – Gramophone (CHAN20122)
Sound/Video
Paused
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1String Quintet No. 1, Op. 18, MWV R 21 I. Allegro con moto
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2String Quintet No. 1, Op. 18, MWV R 21 II. Intermezzo
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3String Quintet No. 1, Op. 18, MWV R 21 III. Scherzo
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4String Quintet No. 1, Op. 18, MWV R 21 IV. Allegro vivace
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5String Quintet No. 2, Op. 87, MWV R 33 I. Allegro vivace
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6String Quintet No. 2, Op. 87, MWV R 33 II. Allegretto scherzando
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7String Quintet No. 2, Op. 87, MWV R 33 III. Adagio e lento
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8String Quintet No. 2, Op. 87, MWV R 33 IV. Allegro molto vivace
Europadisc Review
Considering Felix Mendelssohn’s place in the history of western music, his reputation has had a rather bumpy ride over the years. He was one of the greatest prodigies music has ever known: the elderly Goethe, no less, compared Mendelssohn favourably with Mozart, whom he also heard early in his career, while even the far from uncritical Charles Rosen declared the young Mendelssohn to be the possessor of a ‘control of large-scale structure unsurpassed by any composer of his generation’. During his lifetime Mendelssohn was feted not just as the creator of such unquestioned masterpieces as the Octet for strings, the concert overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the ‘Italian’ and ‘Scottish’ symphonies and the Violin Concerto in E minor (to say nothing of St Paul and Elijah, which fell out of favour with later generations), but as a conductor, pianist and organist, in particular raising the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to a position of pre-eminence among German orchestras as well as establishing the city’s renowned conservatoire. Mendelssohn’s frequent visits to Britain had a huge impact on Victorian musical life. And his advocacy of the music of the past went much further than his seminal revival (at the age of just 20!) of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, establishing the classics of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Weber as foundational to the emerging ‘canon’ of classical music.
Mendelssohn was a notable champion of the music of Niels Gade and William Sterndale Bennett among others. Yet despite his own lifelong production of inspired masterpieces (including the handful of works for which he is now best remembered), his essential artistic conservatism meant that his music was viewed with a mixture of grudging admiration and outright disdain by musical progressives, chief among them Wagner. Even before the Nazis banned his music and tore down memorials to him, Mendelssohn’s reputation was on the wane, regarded in elite anglophone circles as an outmoded manifestation of Victorian mores.
The past few decades, however, have seen a notable reappraisal of Mendelssohn’s achievements, made possible partly by an increase in biographical research as well as in studies of the sources and a planned new edition of his works. Recordings, too, have become plentiful, covering much more than just the ‘headline’ works. In the past couple of months alone – prompted no doubt by this year’s 175th anniversary of the composer’s death – there have been notable new recordings of string quartets, the violin sonatas, solo piano works and the piano concertos.
The Chandos label has been among the leaders in the current Mendelssohn revival on disc, notably the acclaimed ‘Mendelssohn in Birmingham’ series from the CBSO under Edward Gardner and the complete string quartets from the Doric String Quartet. Now, together with the young viola player Timothy Ridout, the Dorics return to present their accounts of the two string quintets, in performances which combine the same immense stylistic sensitivity and full-blooded enthusiasm that characterise their Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann recordings.
Almost two decades separate these quintets: the first was composed in 1826–27, soon after the premiere of the miraculous Octet (dedicated to Mendelssohn’s boyhood friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz), and a similarly style of radiant style of violin writing marks this work too. The Dorics bring out all the Mozartian elegance and poise of the opening Allegro con brio, the pattering lightness of the cello’s transitional idea anticipating the elfin delicacy of the exposition’s closing section. The care they take over Mendelssohn’s dynamics allows the steady rhythmic intensification of the development section, and even when all five instruments are at their most active the textures are admirably clear, culminating in a wonderfully gentle, sunlit coda.
In 1832 Mendelssohn jettisoned the Quintet’s original third movement, a rather academic-feeling Minuet, and placed before the Scherzo a newly-composed and nobly poignant Intermezzo which became the new heart of the work. This performance gives the movement just the right amount of space to allow the music to breathe, while retaining an intensity and momentum in the more anguished outbursts of the central section. The Scherzo, meanwhile, is very much in the fairy-music mould of the Midsummer Night’s Dream music (composed shortly after the original version of the Quintet), combined with the composer’s penchant for fugal writing. Here the Dorics and Ridout – starting with the two violas – emphasise the music’s frosty edginess over its lightness; only one slightly awkward edit mars this involving reading, which goes for full-on rustic roughness in the dramatic dynamic contrasts introduced after the halfway point. The closing Allegro vivace starts conventionally enough, with the players evidently relishing the sudden upward swoops after the opening paragraph. But soon the music turns into one of the most enjoyable double fugues you’ll ever hear, and in this engrossingly immediate performance it really takes wing, reminding us yet again of this work’s proximity to the Octet.
The Second Quintet was composed in 1845, little more than two years before Mendelssohn’s death at the age of 38. By this time he was one of the most celebrated musicians in Europe, as renowned as a performer as he was as a composer. Quite why he should have returned to the string quintet at the stage is unclear, but the work belies the sanitised, saccharine image of Mendelssohn that emerged in the years after his death. This is music of passionate involvement, reflecting the composer’s sometimes volatile temperament, but it nevertheless retains a freshness of invention and tone that will come as a surprise to those who don’t already know it. As in the First Quintet, this performance is one of unbridled enthusiasm and joy, coupled with an underlying classical poise of which Mendelssohn would have approved.
The opening Allegro vivace unleashes itself with barely contained ebullience and energy, and the Dorics clearly enjoy the music’s rich textures as well as its often headlong trajectory while taking care to take in more relaxed views during the journey; the brilliant first violin part of the outer movement suggests that it was written with the Gewandhaus’s leader Ferdinand David in mind. The second movement is a tiptoe-light Allegretto scherzando which again indulges moments of fugal writing, but the work’s emotional centre of gravity is the hauntingly funereal Adagio e lento third movement. It prompts a performance of extraordinary expressive intensity and involvement in which every sinew seems to be stretched, and in which the full advantage of the five-part scoring with its rich inner lines is felt. The movement’s climax – a soaring violin over supporting tremolo from the other players as the music transitions to the major mode – is uniquely affecting.
Mendelssohn was never entirely satisfied with the construction of the concluding Allegro molto vivace: his innate perfectionism got the better of him here. Had he heard the spirited performance of the Dorics, he would surely have been more self-forgiving. At any rate, their nimble, thoroughly committed performance, full of life and revelling in the dynamic contrasts while preserving throughout an unselfconscious poise and stylishness, caps a disc of real stature. These are clearly works that deserve to rank alongside the works of Mozart, Schubert and Brahms (not to mention Bruckner, Taneyev and others) as cornerstones of the quintet repertoire, and Ridout and the Doric String Quartet are splendid advocates.
Mendelssohn was a notable champion of the music of Niels Gade and William Sterndale Bennett among others. Yet despite his own lifelong production of inspired masterpieces (including the handful of works for which he is now best remembered), his essential artistic conservatism meant that his music was viewed with a mixture of grudging admiration and outright disdain by musical progressives, chief among them Wagner. Even before the Nazis banned his music and tore down memorials to him, Mendelssohn’s reputation was on the wane, regarded in elite anglophone circles as an outmoded manifestation of Victorian mores.
The past few decades, however, have seen a notable reappraisal of Mendelssohn’s achievements, made possible partly by an increase in biographical research as well as in studies of the sources and a planned new edition of his works. Recordings, too, have become plentiful, covering much more than just the ‘headline’ works. In the past couple of months alone – prompted no doubt by this year’s 175th anniversary of the composer’s death – there have been notable new recordings of string quartets, the violin sonatas, solo piano works and the piano concertos.
The Chandos label has been among the leaders in the current Mendelssohn revival on disc, notably the acclaimed ‘Mendelssohn in Birmingham’ series from the CBSO under Edward Gardner and the complete string quartets from the Doric String Quartet. Now, together with the young viola player Timothy Ridout, the Dorics return to present their accounts of the two string quintets, in performances which combine the same immense stylistic sensitivity and full-blooded enthusiasm that characterise their Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann recordings.
Almost two decades separate these quintets: the first was composed in 1826–27, soon after the premiere of the miraculous Octet (dedicated to Mendelssohn’s boyhood friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz), and a similarly style of radiant style of violin writing marks this work too. The Dorics bring out all the Mozartian elegance and poise of the opening Allegro con brio, the pattering lightness of the cello’s transitional idea anticipating the elfin delicacy of the exposition’s closing section. The care they take over Mendelssohn’s dynamics allows the steady rhythmic intensification of the development section, and even when all five instruments are at their most active the textures are admirably clear, culminating in a wonderfully gentle, sunlit coda.
In 1832 Mendelssohn jettisoned the Quintet’s original third movement, a rather academic-feeling Minuet, and placed before the Scherzo a newly-composed and nobly poignant Intermezzo which became the new heart of the work. This performance gives the movement just the right amount of space to allow the music to breathe, while retaining an intensity and momentum in the more anguished outbursts of the central section. The Scherzo, meanwhile, is very much in the fairy-music mould of the Midsummer Night’s Dream music (composed shortly after the original version of the Quintet), combined with the composer’s penchant for fugal writing. Here the Dorics and Ridout – starting with the two violas – emphasise the music’s frosty edginess over its lightness; only one slightly awkward edit mars this involving reading, which goes for full-on rustic roughness in the dramatic dynamic contrasts introduced after the halfway point. The closing Allegro vivace starts conventionally enough, with the players evidently relishing the sudden upward swoops after the opening paragraph. But soon the music turns into one of the most enjoyable double fugues you’ll ever hear, and in this engrossingly immediate performance it really takes wing, reminding us yet again of this work’s proximity to the Octet.
The Second Quintet was composed in 1845, little more than two years before Mendelssohn’s death at the age of 38. By this time he was one of the most celebrated musicians in Europe, as renowned as a performer as he was as a composer. Quite why he should have returned to the string quintet at the stage is unclear, but the work belies the sanitised, saccharine image of Mendelssohn that emerged in the years after his death. This is music of passionate involvement, reflecting the composer’s sometimes volatile temperament, but it nevertheless retains a freshness of invention and tone that will come as a surprise to those who don’t already know it. As in the First Quintet, this performance is one of unbridled enthusiasm and joy, coupled with an underlying classical poise of which Mendelssohn would have approved.
The opening Allegro vivace unleashes itself with barely contained ebullience and energy, and the Dorics clearly enjoy the music’s rich textures as well as its often headlong trajectory while taking care to take in more relaxed views during the journey; the brilliant first violin part of the outer movement suggests that it was written with the Gewandhaus’s leader Ferdinand David in mind. The second movement is a tiptoe-light Allegretto scherzando which again indulges moments of fugal writing, but the work’s emotional centre of gravity is the hauntingly funereal Adagio e lento third movement. It prompts a performance of extraordinary expressive intensity and involvement in which every sinew seems to be stretched, and in which the full advantage of the five-part scoring with its rich inner lines is felt. The movement’s climax – a soaring violin over supporting tremolo from the other players as the music transitions to the major mode – is uniquely affecting.
Mendelssohn was never entirely satisfied with the construction of the concluding Allegro molto vivace: his innate perfectionism got the better of him here. Had he heard the spirited performance of the Dorics, he would surely have been more self-forgiving. At any rate, their nimble, thoroughly committed performance, full of life and revelling in the dynamic contrasts while preserving throughout an unselfconscious poise and stylishness, caps a disc of real stature. These are clearly works that deserve to rank alongside the works of Mozart, Schubert and Brahms (not to mention Bruckner, Taneyev and others) as cornerstones of the quintet repertoire, and Ridout and the Doric String Quartet are splendid advocates.
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