Mendelssohn and The Schumanns

Schumann was at her height with composition when she was in the middle of her career. In the modern-day, her songs and piano trios are a particular favourite, alongside her Three Romances for Violin and Piano. This work was composed in 1853 and was first premiered in 1855. Clara Schumann famously said that “women are not born to compose”, however during this period, she composed quite a few of her most famous works.

Three Romances for Violin and Piano was dedicated to close friend and virtuoso violinist, Joseph Joachim. Schumann and Joachim went on tour with this piece and they even played it before King George V of Hanover who absolutely loved the work. One critic said “All three pieces display an individual character conceived in a truly sincere manner and written in a delicate and fragrant hand.”

Even in the modern-day, this work is perhaps one of Clara’s most famous, there was a critic who wrote in 2013 that this work was “lush and poignant, they make one regret that Clara’s career as a composer became subordinate to her husband’s.”

The work is in three movements:

1. Andante molto
2. Allegretto
3. Leidenschaftlich schnell

Romances were one of Clara Schumann’s favourite forms to compose in, which is perhaps why this particular work is so effective. The three movements are contrasting, exciting and bursting with character.

Ⓒ Alex Burns

Symphony No. 4 in A, ‘Italian’

I           Allegro vivace

II          Andante con moto

III         Con moto moderato

IV         Saltarello: Presto

When Schubert and Beethoven were still alive and before Mendelssohn was 14 years old, he composed a set of 12 string symphonies, intended for the musical evenings in his cultured family home. These symphonies are delightful, often original and always spontaneous compositions without the slightest sign of immaturity or any other imperfection suggesting that the composer was a child.

His next symphony, first numbered ‘13’ but scored for full orchestra, was composed many years later. Realising that the work was on a much larger scale than the early symphonies, he renamed it ‘First Symphony’, numbering those that followed accordingly. The Symphony in A major, Op. 90, is the fourth of these, and it was Mendelssohn himself who referred to it as his Italian Symphony.

An infant prodigy is not aware of dancing on a tightrope towards an abyss. In later life the realisation of the dangers implied in such a feat is liable to cause a crisis which can, and often does, destroy a promising career. In the case of Mendelssohn this crisis was aggravated by a lack of single-mindedness in composition, arising from his many varied talents and interests and, perhaps above all, from his cultured family background.  As an adult he began to doubt the merits of the early compositions he had written so effortlessly, and this critical uncertainty also affected his later symphonies. For instance, he kept revising the Italian Symphony, always maintaining that it was incomplete, and he would not permit a performance of the work in Germany, although he had no objection to having it played in London. It is a near miracle that none of these negative factors show in his music. The Italian Symphony in its now accepted form sounds as fresh, spontaneous and original as the brilliant very early Octet for Strings or the splendid A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture.

Mendelssohn spent the winter of 1831 in Rome and visited Naples the following summer. He worked on the Fourth Symphony while he was in Italy and finished the original version in Germany in March 1833. In May of that year Mendelssohn conducted the first performance at a concert of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London but it was not until 1849, two years after his death, that the symphony was first performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in Germany.

The opening Allegro vivace fits comfortably into a somewhat updated first movement form, and the lively pulse of the running semiquavers even gathers speed in the coda. The Andante con moto was probably inspired by the music used for a progression of pilgrims that Mendelssohn heard in Naples. The gentle third movement has an ingenious trio for horns and bassoons, and the finale consists entirely of a ferocious Neapolitan dance called a Saltarello (from saltare – to jump). It is in the key of A minor and even ends quite unconventionally in that mode, without returning to its home key of A major.

© Stefan de Haan