String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 87

The character of Mendelssohn’s chamber music suggests the carefree fluency of Mozart merged with the dramatic rhetoric of Beethoven. Schumann once remarked that Mendelssohn was “the Mozart of the 19th century…the one who most clearly reveals the contradictions of his time and who is the first to reconcile them.” Schumann pinpoints a kind disjunction between Mendelssohn and his era. Indeed, the sound of the op. 87 String Quintet stands in closer relation to works like Beethoven’s early string quartets than to pieces written by other composers around 1845 (the date when Mendelssohn penned the quintet). This is not to say that echoes of Mendelssohn’s own works are not apparent; the opening textures will evoke the composer’s famous Octet for many listeners. And the string writing in the second movement Scherzo takes me back to the first time I studied Mendelssohn’s youthful String Symphonies. From a few favorite harmonic progressions to string arpeggios borrowed directly from the great E-minor Violin Concerto, Mendelssohn’s fingerprints may be found all over the quintet. But equally strong are parallels to Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets. For instance, Mendelssohn’s third movement Adagio in D minor clearly recalls the “Romeo and Juliet” movement—in the same key—of Beethoven’s op. 18 no. 1.
Mendelssohn has completely mastered the relation between form and expressive content. Consider, again in the quintet’s third movement, how the theme’s reprise, following a contrasting and quite touching B section, emerges flawlessly in the lower strings out of a free cadenza in first violin. Or how the major-mode coda subtly suggests motives from the first movement without hindering the sense of forward progression in terms of overall form. During the finale Mendelssohn clearly got back into the spirit of his op. 64 Violin Concerto. Still, despite a few moments of soloistic display in first violin, the composer manages wonderfully to keep an even fully-voiced five-part texture. My only regret is that he did not more fully develop the fugal section heard near the finale’s middle. The theme itself—a group of fast notes followed by an upward leap and slowly falling chromatic descent—envisions Old Bach at his most exuberant and would have made for a compelling four-voice fugue. Mendelssohn toys with the subject, passing it quickly back and forth between the string parts. But this finale has other fish to fry and he, perhaps wisely, keeps the Baroque learned style neatly constrained within bounds.

(c) Jason Stell