Program notes by J. Michael Allsen

This springtime program begins with a long-neglected work by Fanny Mendelssohn, her bright Overture in C in Major. Next, violinist Mathesuz Wolski join us to play the romantic, Spanish-flavored Symphonie Espagnole of Édouard Lalo. To round off the program, we have a familiar piece by Fanny’s talented kid brother Felix, his exuberant “Italian” symphony.

This overture is the only surviving orchestral piece by Fanny Mendelssohn, probably written for performance at one of the Sunday musicales hosted at the home of her parents.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

Born: November 14, 1805, Hamburg, Germany.

Died: May 14, 1847, Berlin, Germany.

Overture in C Major

• Composed: 1830.
• Premiere: Unknown, though probably at a private concert at the home of her parents shortly after it was written. It was unpublished until 1994—over 160 years later!
• Duration: 12:00.

Background

Fanny Mendelssohn, older sister of Felix, may have been every bit as talented as her famous brother. When she was born, her mother Lea remarked that she had “Bach fugal fingers,” and young Fanny studied piano first with her mother. The family moved to Berlin in 1811, where the Mendelssohn family home became one of the social centers of the city’s music life, with visits by prominent musicians, and weekly private concerts, usually including performances and occasionally compositions by the two Mendelssohn Wunderkinder. In 1819, the family hired a composition teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, to tutor both children. Fanny Mendelssohn began composing at this time, and continued throughout her life, eventually completing some 400 works: primarily solo piano and chamber works, and nearly 250 Lieder for solo voice and piano. She married painter William Hensel in 1829. Though her husband and brother continued to encourage her composition, she was held back by the culture of the day: upper-class married German women simply did not have professional careers, let alone careers in composition. Though she did eventually begin to publish some of her music in 1846, this was cut short by her premature death in 1847. Much of her music remained unknown until the 20th century.

What You’ll Hear

Fanny Mendelssohn’s only purely orchestral work, the Overture in C Major, was composed in about 1830, and was undoubtedly played at one of the private concerts at the Mendelssohn family home in Berlin. Like the series of string sinfonias Felix had written a decade earlier, it shows the rather conservative influence of their teacher Zelter: this is a piece that looks back to the style of Mozart and Haydn. It begins with a gentle, sighing introduction (Andante). A flute solo leads a forceful transition into the first theme, marked con fuoco (with fire)—a bold string figure. The contrasting theme is a warm string melody. The development focuses on the main theme, before a rather grandiose transition leads into the recapitulation. She extends this with a new idea before closing with a dramatic coda.

This piece, certainly the most popular work by Lalo, channels the music of Spain. It was written for the most important Spanish violin virtuoso of the day, Pablo de Sarasate.

Édouard Lalo

Born: January 27, 1823, Lille, France.

Died: April 22, 1892, Paris, France.

Symphonie Espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 21

• Composed: 1873-74.
• Premiere: February 7, 1874, in Paris, by violinist Pablo de Sarasate.
• Duration: 33:00.

Background

Though he was not particularly well-known as composer until he was in his 50s, Édouard Lalo, a Belgian, eventually became one the most important musicians in the Parisian musical scene. Unlike his good friend Hector Berlioz, Lalo’s first interest was chamber music, and he played viola in the Armingaud Quartet, a group that was largely responsible for the revival of interest in France in the string quartets of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Despite the high quality of some of his early works, Lalo was largely ignored as a composer: chamber music was less popular in France than orchestral music and opera, and during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, any composer with supposedly “German” musical sympathies was mistrusted. His prospects brightened within a few years, however. After its humiliating defeat in the war, one of the French government’s responses was to pump money into the arts, to reinvigorate French music, dance, and theatre, and to give French performing arts pride of place in Europe. Lalo benefited enormously from the support of the Société Nationale de Musique, a publicly funded concert society. He was also befriended by the Spanish violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, and Lalo wrote two large works in quick succession for his new friend: the Op.20 violin concerto (1873) and his Symphonie Espagnole (1874). The Symphonie Espagnole became (and remains) his most popular work, and with that encouragement Lalo turned to larger forms. Over the next 14 years, he composed most of his most famous works: notably the cello concerto, his Concerto Russe (also intended originally for Sarasate), the ballet Namouna, and the opera Le roi d’Ys.

From the 1870s through the early 20th century, the French were fascinated with Spanish music—Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole and Bizet’s Carmen a few years later were only the first of many French works that used exotic Spanish styles. But Lalo’s direct inspiration was Sarasate himself. Sarasate was well known both as a virtuoso and as a composer of Spanish-style violin music. Lalo’s use of Spanish flavor is more subtle and ultimately tastier than Sarasate’s however: Lalo used Spanish melodic figures and dance rhythms sparingly throughout the work, only occasionally letting these elements govern the music. (That is, Lalo used pinches of spice, while Sarasate and many Spanish composers who followed tended to dump in the whole jar!)

What You’ll Hear

Lalo explained the unusual title in a letter: “It conveyed my thought—a violin soaring above the rigid form of an old symphony.” Each of five fairly compact movements is set in a symphonic form, beginning with the first (Allegro non troppo), which is laid out in relatively conventional sonata form—though he does make room for a concerto-style cadenza at the end of the development. Lalo works with two main ideas in this movement: a bold, martial melody and a more lyrical second idea in Spanish style. The second movement (Scherzando: Allegro molto) is a gently seductive Spanish dance with a somewhat more serious middle section. The Intermezzo (Allegretto non troppo) seems like a genteel French take on bullfighting music, with the violin spending much of the outer sections in the smoky low range above a quiet habañera rhythm, and rising to a passionate peak in the middle. The orchestra introduces the solemn folklike main idea of the Andante, which the violin then develops passionately until it introduces a brighter new idea, and launches a brief cadenza. The finale (Rondo: Allegro) is built on an animated main theme that provides the soloist with material for development. There are a few contrasting ideas, including a brief reminiscence of the Intermezzo, but the focus stays on virtuoso fireworks from the soloist throughout.

This exuberant symphony was inspired by an extended stay the 20-year-old composer made in Italy in 1830-31.

Felix Mendelssohn

Born: February 3, 1809, Hamburg, Germany.

Died: November 4, 1847, Leipzig, Germany.

Symphony No. 4 in A Major, op. 90 (Italian)

• Composed: 1830-33. Mendelsohn revise the score extensively following the premiere.
• Premiere: May 13, 1833 in London, the composer conducting.
• Duration: 27:00.

Background

Like many young men of wealthy 19th-century families, Felix Mendelssohn was able to indulge in the tradition of the “grand tour”—indeed, Mendelssohn seems to have spent most of his early adulthood as a tourist. His letters from this period show him to be a keen and enthusiastic observer of the lands and cultures he visited. During 1830-31, Mendelssohn was in Italy, touring and socializing with other artistic-minded travelers (including Hector Berlioz). Italy seems to have been one of Mendelssohn’s favorite stopovers. In a letter of 1830, he wrote: “This is Italy! What I have been looking forward to all my life as the greatest happiness is now begun, and I am basking in it.”

That Mendelssohn would write a symphony inspired by festive Italian culture comes as no surprise. His traveling experiences provided inspiration for some of his finest musical works. His “Scottish” symphony (No.3) and the Hebrides Overture, are two of the very best musical observations of Scotland ever written. Most of the Symphony No.4 was sketched out during his Italian tour. In February of 1831, he wrote from Rome to his sister Fanny: “The ‘Italian’ symphony is making great progress. It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done, especially the last movement. I have not found anything for the slow movement yet, and I think that I will save that for Naples.”

Like Mozart, Mendelssohn has the historical reputation of effortless talent, but the “Italian” symphony was actually the product of many revisions. In another letter of 1831, Mendelssohn complained to Fanny that the piece was not falling together as well as he had originally thought, and was costing him an undue amount of effort. He completed the score in Berlin in March 1833, and conducted the first performance a few months later in London. However, Mendelssohn revised the score extensively in 1837, and at the time of his death he was planning to revise the Saltarello yet again. The 1837 version of the symphony (the version known today) was probably never performed during Mendelssohn’s lifetime, and was published only after his death.

What You’ll Hear

None of the creative pains that the “Italian” symphony cost the composer are evident in this, the “jolliest” of Mendelssohn’s symphonies. The exuberant opening movement (Allegro vivace) is in 6/8—probably the most distinctively “Italian” of meters—and is set in a thoroughly classical sonata form. The opening theme is stated by the strings over a background of repeated chords in the winds. The second theme, announced by the woodwinds, is no less festive. Mendelssohn introduces a new, rather martial theme at the beginning of the fugal development section. A lengthy and dramatic crescendo leads into the recapitulation, which includes a brief reworking of the martial theme from the development.

In his letter to Fanny, Mendelssohn wrote that he intended to “save” the slow movement until he arrived in Naples, and the Andante con moto seems in fact to have been inspired by a religious procession that the composer witnessed there. The clarinet’s opening figure sounds much like the chant intonation of a priest, and the plodding pizzicato bass line sets up a rather doleful mood for the main theme of the movement. This main theme is not in itself Italian, but may have been based upon a melody by Mendelssohn’s composition teacher, Zelter.

The third movement, marked Con moto moderato, is in the spirit of a courtly 18th-century minuet. At the center of this movement is a lovely, pastoral trio section with sonorous horns and delicate woodwind lines that sounds much like Mendelssohn’s overture and incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The finale, titled Saltarello, is a combination of two Italian dances: the Saltarello, a hopping dance of ancient origin, and the Tarantella, a wildly fast and whirling couple dance, that seems to have originated in the city of Taranto. (There is an—alas, untrue—tradition that the Tarantella was danced as a folk cure for a tarantula bite; that the victim dances frantically until he or she is cured…or dead.) There is no stopping for breath in this energetic finale, which is not without a few dark moments. We hear directly from the composer’s heart in this last movement — as Mendelssohn wrote to Zelter from Rome: ­“…I am enjoying the most wonderful combination of gaiety and seriousness, such as can only be found in Italy.”

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Program notes ©2025 by J. Michael Allsen