Quartet in E flat major Op.12

What goblins and dragons have you been dreaming about to drive you
along so wildly? Carl Zelter,
Mendelssohn’s teacher, reacting to an improvisation by the 12-yr-old composer
in Goethe’s presence.Mendelssohn rather queered his own
pitch by writing his most loved chamber music work when he was only sixteen
thus raising the bar for the later works of his youth to an impossibly high
level. The E-flat Quartet is a case in point, written in London when he was
barely twenty and in anyone else a remarkable achievement, but for Mendelssohn
no more than expected. The year 1829 had seen one of his earliest conducting
triumphs, namely to organise with his friend the singer Eduard Devrient the
first performance of the St Matthew Passion since Bach’s death. To think said the triumphant composer that it should be an actor and a
Jew that have given back to the people the greatest Christian work.Of course it took
more than dreams of goblins and dragons to bring Mendelssohn to such a pitch so
young. His schooling was ferocious and his appetite for deep study voracious.
The two quartets published as Op.12 and Op.13 were the fruit of intense work on
Beethoven’s late quartets, which he would have consulted in manuscript through
his publisher. This alone marked him out as very few musicians had at that time
attempted to come to grips with these masterpieces.The Quartet opens
with a short slow introduction that leads imperceptibly into the lyrical
Allegro, whose formal structure is obscured by the similarity of the three
themes – instead of the intellectual complexities of sonata form Mendelssohn
chooses a kind of extended variation that gives his lyricism and sense of drama
full rein. An unusual feature is the haunting new theme that appears instead of
a development, a theme that reappears not only in the coda but also in the
Finale.

The second movement is the well-known Canzonetta, the charming melody in G minor
frames a swifter virtuoso central section in the major. The passionate,
recitative-like Andante should not be considered as a separate movement but
more as an extended introduction to the Finale, which breaks in tempestuously
without a pause. This movement’s spirited progress is interrupted by the
recurrence of the third theme from the opening movement, although its lyrical
intervention can do little to slow the music’s hectic progress until it
reappears in the coda and the storm is finally calmed.