programme notes
by the opening motif sometimes compared to the Schicksals-Motiv of Beethoven’s Fifth) gives way to victory and triumph in the final Presto movement, a lively tarantella. Schubert concludes his quartet with the victory of life over death.
A conversation with the past We hear an entirely different conversation with the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 13 by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Aris Quartett & Piatti Quartet concert). Mendelssohn wrote this quartet at the age of 18 just after he had been admitted to the university in Berlin and attended lectures by the philosopher Hegel. His String Quartet No. 2 not only shows the enthusiasm and the zest for life of a young 18-year-old student but also the gravity of a nascent composer who is aware of his talents and the responsibility they involve. A few months earlier, Beethoven died and his String Quartet in A minor (Opus 132) served as an inspiration to Mendelssohn. The conversation he is having in the String Quartet No. 2 is with the past. Many of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries, including his own father and composer Louis Spohr, considered Beethoven’s late string quartets (not all of which had yet been published in 1827) ‘undecipherable horrors’. Mendelssohn, however, did not feel the same way. He admired the cyclical formal organisation of these quartets and made sure that the relationship between the four parts of his own string quartet are
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just as tight as in Beethoven’s late string quartets. The musical motif Mendelssohn used as the basis for his String Quartet No. 2 is a quotation ‘Ist es wahr’ from the song Frage (Opus 9, No. 1), which he had written a few months earlier. Mendelssohn effectively wrote the text ‘Ist es wahr’ on the score of his string quartet alluding to the words ‘Muss es sein?’ Beethoven wrote on the score of his String Quartet No. 16’s final movement. It was a courageous choice for the young Mendelssohn to take Beethoven’s quartets, not Mozart’s, as the starting point for his own work. The fact that he succeeded in capturing some of Beethoven’s spirit is demonstrated by an anecdote at the Paris première of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2. Apparently someone confided in him saying that ‘these quartets are quite like his symphonies, wouldn’t you say?’ When a confused Mendelssohn asked him what he meant, he was told: ‘why yes, Beethoven’s symphonies of course, the composer of this quartet.’
A conversation with the audience Mendelssohn is featured on the bill of the Quartet Marathon a second time with his famous Octet, Op. 20 (concert Aris Quartett & Piatti Quartet) from 1825. When he was sixteen, the composer wrote the Octet as a birthday present for his violin teacher Eduard Ritz. At its very first performance, the Octet was already considered one of the miracles of the 19th century. Few 25