Mendelssohn: String Quintet No. 1 in A major, Op. 18

Continuing their survey of Mendelssohn’s String Quartets, in Mendelssohn the Leipzig musicians are in their element: sovereign instrumental command, consummate sound design, and precision teamwork perfected in detail offer a dynamic listening experience in a special class of its own.

Mendelssohn was without doubt the most precociously gifted composer the world has ever known: not even Mozart produced ‘mature’ masterpieces while still in his teens. He was also a double prodigy on the violin and piano, an exceptional athlete, a talented poet (Goethe was a childhood friend and confidant), multi-linguist, watercolorist and philosopher. He excelled at virtually anything which could hold his attention for long enough, although it was music above all which activated his creative imagination.

The two String Quintets were composed at opposite ends of his short career. No 1 was written in 1826, soon after the completion of the Octet and E major Piano Sonata and before the Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, when Mendelssohn was still only seventeen. He later substituted a slow movement in memory of his friend the violinist Eduard Rietz, and it was this revised version of the Quintet that was published in Bonn the same year and is recorded here.

Quintet No 2 dates from 1845 (when Mendelssohn was still only thirty-six), a year before his triumphant success with Elijah in Birmingham and just two years prior to his premature death.

Though Mendelssohn’s two string quintets sound as if they were written one right after the other, they were actually composed 20 years apart; and a good deal of revising and refining went into them. Overall, Mendelssohn’s approach reveals a very different sense of how music is constructed, certainly compared with the compositional aesthetics of Beethoven’s chamber music. The techniques used are nowhere to be found in Beethoven, least of all in his revered string quartets. Rather they are to be found in the composers who were being rediscovered as part of the growing historical awareness of Mendelssohn’s era. Mendelssohn’s interest in chamber music helped fuel his own compositions, and in a sense forced him to clarify his own understanding; thus in 1842 he wrote a famous letter stating his musical aesthetic and the importance of instrumental music:

‘So many words are uttered about music, and yet so little is said... People complain that music is so open to interpretation and that they don’t know what they are supposed to think. Words, on the other hand, they think, can be understood by everyone. For me it’s exactly the other way around… What music expresses for me… are not ideas that are too indefinite to put into words, but too definite…’ That is the aesthetic embodied in these delightful works; and it is captivatingly articulated here by the original-instrument ensemble L’Archibudelli.

This Bruch String Quintet is a recent discovery. It was composed in 1918 when Bruch was 80 years old and the score and parts were copied out by Bruch’s daughter-in-law Gertrude. These parts disappeared and re-emerged in the hands of a private collector in the 1980s. They were auctioned in 2006 to another collector and only then became accessible.

Two works completed before the composer turned 23. Schumann asserted: "he is the Mozart of the 19th century, he is the brightest composer of the age, and he comprehends, with finest humour, the contradictions of our time more clearly than anyone, so that he is the first to reconcile them".

The String Quartet in E flat major featured on this CD is known as opus 12. However, it is actually Felix Mendelssohn’s third quartet, and was composed two years after opus 13 during a long and successful visit to England in 1829. By far the best-known movement is the Canzonetta, which is also frequently performed as an independent work. The quartet is cyclic, and themes heard in previous movements make their reappearance in the finale. Mendelssohn composed his quintet opus 18 at the age of seventeen and his admiration for his idol Beethoven is once again evident in the finale where the opening displays clear similarities with the final movement of Beethoven’s quartet opus 18 no 1.

The Matangi Quartet was founded in 1999 by four young musicians then studying at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and the Conservatory of Rotterdam. In 2003 the group completed the two-year, full-time course at the Netherlands String Quartet Academy under the direction of Stefan Metz (cellist of the Orlando Quartet). Whilst at the Academy, the Matangi Quartet also had the opportunity to take lessons from international renowned musicians, including the members of the Amadeus Quartet. In addition the quartet have received intensive mentoring for several years from the violist of Schönberg Quartet, Henk Guittart. In 2002 they were awarded the prestigious Kersjes van de Groenekan Award, an annual prize awarded to exceptional chamber music talent in the Netherlands, and in 2008 the quartet won third prize at the International Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition in Weimar. The group is joined in the String Quintet by Viola player Edith van Moergastel.

Mendelssohn’s chamber music is often overshadowed by his larger orchestral works and is rarely performed. The two works featured on this timely new release on CPO, brought out to celebrate Mendelssohn’s bicentenary, occupy an important place in the history of the string quintet.

Operating entirely in the tradition established by Mozart, Mendelssohn wrote his quintets for two violins, two violas, and one violoncello. The two String Quintets were composed at opposite ends of his career.

Quintet No. 1 was written in 1826 when Mendelssohn was only seventeen, whilst Quintet No. 2 dates from 1845, just two years prior to his premature death. The second quintet exhibits greater formal control and a character reminiscent of orchestral music.

The quintets are performed by the internationally renowned Mannheimer String Quartet. Having been awarded the German Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize they are well qualified interpreters.

“The Mannheim String Quartet play this rewarding music with fire and commitment, rhythmically very lively and with impressive unanimity of attack…” International Record Review on the Mannheimer String Quartet

Mendelssohn’s musical precocity, both as a player and as a performer, manifested itself at a remarkably early age. In 1826, when he was only 17, Mendelssohn wrote not only his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream but the first of his two string quintets. The String Quintet No. 2 followed 19 years later, in 1845, two years before his death. Despite the intervening years, the two Quintets are similar in style and form, with richly melodic and haunting slow movements and two wonderfully contrasting scherzos