SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW

Mendelssohn: Franco Mezzena (violin), Roberto Prosseda (piano) Viotti Chamber Orchestra conducted by Franco Mezzena. An RAI Radio 3 concert in the Pauline Chapel of the Quirinale Palace, Rome, 6.12.2009 (JB)

Sonata in F for violin and piano (1820)
Concerto in D minor for violin, piano and strings (1823).

Mendelssohn’s Real Juvenilia
 

As we near the end of the year celebrating the bicentenary of Mendelssohn’s birth, the music world is aware that at the age of fifteen, the boy produced one of the great masterpieces of the nineteenth century in his octet. But what was Mendelssohn writing before he was fifteen ? The pianist and musicologist, Roberto Prosseda, has been busy finding out. His findings contain some delightful surprises. And as he says of the two pieces in which he performed on Sunday morning –never mind that these works were produced by a boy in his early teens, they are remarkable pieces by any standard of any age.

The RAI Radio 3 Sunday morning aperitif concerts, under the artistic guidance of Michele Dall’Ongaro, are presented in the Pauline Chapel within the Quirinale Palace, the Italian President’s residence. They are also directly broadcast through the Euroradio network, at 1200 Italian time. The chapel was built by Carlo Maderno (1556 – 1629) for the Borghese Pope, Paul V (1605 -1621 .) In the 1870s, when Italy became a Republic with Rome as its capital, the popes were confined to the Vatican But the Pauline Chapel studiedly replicated the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel so that the College of Cardinals could be convened there for their deliberations on the election of a new pope.  Impressive as it is, the Pauline Chapel does not have a ceiling painted by Michelangelo but the seating capacity is around seven hundred and the acoustic perfect.

Both pieces follow the formula which must have been all too familiar to young Felix: two lively outer movements with a slow movement in-between. Let it be said right away that neither piece shows the mastery of this classical form, which in mature Mendelssohn, would become text-book models of excellence for those composers who followed him.

The sonata first. The manuscript is dated 1820, which makes the little lad only eleven! The outer movements have all the energy and optimism of youth and the vigour which Mezzena and Prosseda put into their playing was hugely appreciated by the audience. In the first movement there is already some skilled working out of the duo relationship between the two instruments. It sounds like the work of a highly intelligent, hopeful composer who has been listening attentively to the sonatas of Beethoven for the same combination. The remarkable “conversation” between violin and piano could never find a finer duo: violin and piano were quite wonderfully involved with both one another and the meaning of the notes they were playing.

After such a promising opening, the andante comes as a let-down. You can painfully feel that the boy has bitten off more than he can chew. The movement meanders, unsure of which way it should turn. This was not yet the composer who would give the impression that he only had to reach into the air to pull out the most seductive melody you ever heard: think of the opening of the slow movement of the E minor violin concerto.

Life and fun were restored for the presto finale. Mozart is a composer who (sometimes) sounds as though he is having fun in the writing of a piece; Rossini is another, and Mendelssohn, a third. And this is an element present at the age of eleven. Add to this that Franco Mezzena and Roberto Prosseda understand all about musical fun.

The concerto is a better piece of music, but by 1823, Felix was the mature age of thirteen. The first movement is too long and the talented young genius somehow gets trapped in his own cleverness. He would later learn that few musical ideas, gently treated, would be better than overworking every idea that comes into his overactive head. For all that, there are moments of inventiveness which could only have been born of a genius: enough, in fact, to keep the listener’s attention throughout. This is a movement which works because its heart is in the right place. But the head has not yet learned to catch up with the heart.

The adagio meanders more unforgivably than the andante of the sonata. Having learned the lesson of the sonata, I longed for this wearisome student attempt to be over and lead to the sunshine of the finale.

Nor was I disappointed. The allegro molto sounds as though the young composer has jumped out of bed to welcome a perfect spring day after a bad bout of flu. The audience were suitably ecstatic and would not let this admirable duo leave without an encore. That was a brief sketch for a violin and piano piece by ten year old Felix. If you had been his instructor you would probably have said something along the lines of, 'Something good will become of this if you keep on trying along these lines.'

Jack Buckley