MENDELSSOHN - Bis

work for piano four-hands and orchestrated the third movement, a scherzo in G
minor. The latter was produced for Mendelssohn’s formal début in London (25th
May 1829), during which he conducted his Symphony No. 1 (1824) at a concert
of the Royal Philharmonic Society. For this important occasion, Mendelssohn re -
placed the original minuet of his symphony with the newly orchestrated scherzo
of the octet; so successful was the latter that it had to be repeated in full. Al -
though the manu script of this movement was presented to Philharmonic Society
soon thereafter, it continued to gather dust in its archives until 1911, when it was
finally published. Significantly, Mendelssohn’s scherzo is in duple rather than
triple metre and in sonata rather than scherzo-and-trio form. Furthermore, the
composer did not mere ly orchestrate the movement in the Octet, but also short -
ened it, removing a sizeable portion of the development section, thereby making
it all the more concise and ephemeral.
Adapted from a text by Dr Allan B. Ho, © 1998
Disc 9 · Piano Concertos
Mendelssohn achieved brilliance as a pianist when he was very young, and he
himself gave the first per for mances of each of his three piano concertos. On Sun -
day afternoons there were regular concerts in the Mendelssohn family residence,
and it was at one of these gatherings that the thirteen-year-old Felix first played
(and con ducted from the piano) his Concerto in A minor for Piano and String
Orch estra – a piece in which, later in life, he showed little interest and which he
regard ed as a youthful exer cise. The music fell into oblivion and it was not until
well into the twen tieth century that it was re discov er ed and began to enchant the
pub lic with its youth ful charm, brilliance and crafts man ship. Mendelssohn prob -
ably composed this concerto earlier than the Violin Concerto in D minor, some -
where in the middle of his great series of thirteen String Sym phonies. His earliest
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