Beethoven. Schumann. Mendelssohn

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Allegretto in B Flat Major in the summer of 1812 for the Brentano family. On the pages of this short piece for piano, violin and cello the composer gave the indication dolce nine (!) times. The beautifully lyrical music in which almost nothing happens (it is only in the finale that a light shadow is cast, almost like a farewell) brings to mind the future “divine long notes” of Franz Schubert who at that time was just fifteen years of age.
On 6-7 July 1812 Beethoven wrote though he did not send his famous letter to his “Immortal beloved.” To discover the true name of the one to whom it was addressed would require the skill of Sherlock Holmes, though many researchers have arrived at the idea that the intended recipient of the letter was Antonia Brentano.

Robert Schumann wrote his Adagio and Allegro for an ensemble of the piano and another instrument providing the melody – the French horn, cello or violin as the performers chose. The work appeared in February 1849 during a creative upsurge and was accompanied by numerous songs, choruses and works for piano and ensembles. The piece consists of two sections – lento and presto – which at that time was extremely widespread. Hundreds and even thousands of virtuoso pieces for all kinds of instruments were composed in this fashion: in the lento section the performer would demonstrate the art of cantilena and, in the presto section, his technical speed.
Schumann was none too fond of purely virtuoso opuses that turned music into some kind of sport. Turning to the popular genre, he crafted a highly poetic work and spent a very long time selecting a name. Initially the work was known as Romance and Allegro and then, instead of “Romance”, Adagio appeared. The tempi in the sheet music are given in German and slightly differently than they are on the title page: Langsam, mit innigen Ausdruck – Rasch und feurig (“Slowly, with true feeling – quickly, with fire”).

Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770–1827) Violin Sonata, Op. 24 (No 5) was written in late 1800 – early 1801 and is dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries, to whom the composer’s Sonata Op. 23 and his later Seventh Symphony are also dedicated. This bright and lucid work with its witty scherzo, lyrical first section and finale filled with beautiful cantilena was successfully given the title Frühlingssonate (“Spring”) by the Mollo publishing house in Vienna to improve its popularity.
One anonymous critic from Leipzig’s Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung responded to the appearance of Sonatas7nbsp;Op. 23 and 24 with the following words: “The reviewer finds them to be among the finest sonatas that Beethoven has composed, and of course that means they are among the finest written at all in recent times. The composer’s unique, fiery and daring mind could not have escaped attention even in his early works, though it probably did not meet with a favourable reception everywhere as he himself would sometimes burst in rudely and stormily, sullen and gloomy. Now he is becoming clearer, he is increasingly dropping superfluous elements and more happily focussing the attention on his own self...”

Felix Mendelssohn is famous for the ease with which he composed music, but this ease is, at times, deceptive. The composer did not publish his Piano Trio in D Minor immediately at all. Instead, having completed it on 18 July 1839, he began to rework it radically and it was only on 23&bnsp;September that he “dotted the final ‘i’ and crossed the final ‘t’” in the manuscript. In Mendelssohn’s sea of chamber music the Trio in D Minor stands apart as one of the most frequently performed works. In the first section Mendelssohn literally created an “endless melody” but then the music increasingly adopts the character of a scherzo, while in the coda a romantic waltz burst out. The second section opens with a piano solo performing, so to speak, a “song without words”, gradually being joined by the violin and cello.
The third section (scherzo) is notable for its “routine” mobility and, at the same time, its laconic quality, while throughout the trio Mendelssohn demonstrates a sense of measure without crossing the border that separates the grand form of the symphony from chamber music. The finale is the most significant and unpredictable part of the trio. Its main theme, written in the spirit of a ballade, comes to be a source of each new theme, and, in a technical sense, the finale makes incredibly high demands of the pianist.
Anna Bulycheva