Mendelssohn Piano Sonatas Sheet Music, Program Notes and recordings

Program Notes & Analysis

A Prodigy at the Keyboard

During one of his many triumphant visits to England, Felix Mendelssohn had a private audience with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, both avid amateur musicians. The Queen, a great admirer of Mendelssohn's music, offered to sing one of her favorite songs by him. She chose "Italien," a piece from his Opus 8 collection. After she had sung it beautifully, Mendelssohn, with a mixture of charm and slight embarrassment, had to make a confession: the song was not his. It was, in fact, composed by his brilliant older sister, Fanny. This delightful anecdote not only highlights Mendelssohn's grace but also points to the deeply musical environment that nurtured his talent from infancy. He and Fanny were both astonishing prodigies, particularly at the piano, an instrument for which Felix composed with breathtaking virtuosity and insight from a very young age. His piano sonatas, though largely works of his youth, are not juvenile exercises; they are the confident, ambitious, and deeply thoughtful creations of a musician who seemed to have been born with a complete command of his craft.

The Beethovenian Dialogue

It is impossible to discuss Mendelssohn's early sonatas without acknowledging the colossal influence of Ludwig van Beethoven. Mendelssohn came of age just as the world was first encountering the mysteries of Beethoven’s late sonatas, and the teenage composer absorbed them with an analytical and emotional intensity that shaped his entire approach to the form. His Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 6, composed when he was just seventeen, is the most profound example. It is a work that openly converses with Beethoven’s Sonata, Op. 101. Mendelssohn adopts a similar four-movement structure, utilizes recitative-like passages, and, most importantly, employs a cyclical form where themes from the first movement reappear in the finale, unifying the entire work. This was a radical structural idea, and Mendelssohn's embrace of it shows his desire not merely to copy the master, but to understand and expand upon his most forward-thinking concepts. He even incorporates a fugue in the finale, a clear nod to Beethoven’s late-period obsession with counterpoint.

A Twelve-Year-Old Master

Long before the Beethovenian Op. 6, Mendelssohn had already penned a remarkably assured sonata. The Piano Sonata in G minor, Op. 105, was written in 1821 when the composer was a mere twelve years old (its high opus number is due to its posthumous publication). While it adheres more closely to Classical models, echoing the style of Muzio Clementi and Jan Ladislav Dussek, the piece is astonishing in its polish and dramatic flair. The first movement is a compact and turbulent affair, while the central Adagio demonstrates a lyrical maturity far beyond his years, prefiguring the expressive depth of his later Songs Without Words. Even here, the writing is supremely pianistic, fitting perfectly under the hands while demanding considerable dexterity. This sonata, found amongst his counterpoint exercises for his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, proves that for Mendelssohn, mastering the grand form of the sonata was a natural and integral part of his foundational training.

The 'Scottish' Fantasy

Perhaps the greatest of Mendelssohn’s large-scale solo piano works is the Fantasie in F-sharp minor, Op. 28. Though he ultimately titled it a "Fantasie," he referred to it in his letters as the "Sonate écossaise" or "Scottish Sonata," and it truly belongs in any discussion of his sonatas. Composed in its final form in 1833, it is a three-movement work played without pause, a structure that enhances its dramatic, almost narrative, flow. Like Beethoven’s "Moonlight" Sonata, each successive movement is faster than the last. The work opens with a brooding, atmospheric first movement built on sweeping arpeggios and a mournful melody. This gives way to a light, scherzo-like Allegro, which in turn hurtles into a fiery Presto finale. The passionate and virtuosic final movement is a full-fledged sonata-form structure, unleashing a torrent of pianistic fireworks that requires a performer of the highest caliber. It is a masterpiece of early Romanticism, perfectly blending formal ingenuity with dark, dramatic expression.

An Unfair Obscurity

Given their quality and ingenuity, why have Mendelssohn’s piano sonatas remained on the periphery of the standard repertoire? Several factors contribute to their relative neglect. First, they are predominantly the works of a very young man; Mendelssohn soon turned his focus to other genres, leaving the development of the Romantic piano sonata to titans like Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt. Second, his refined classicism and emotional poise were later viewed by some critics, particularly those influenced by the grandiose aesthetics of Richard Wagner, as lacking the profound suffering or revolutionary zeal that was thought to be the hallmark of true genius. His music’s very perfection and elegance were, paradoxically, used as evidence of its supposed superficiality. Finally, the immense popularity of his more accessible piano works, chiefly the Songs Without Words and the Rondo Capriccioso, simply overshadowed these more ambitious and structurally complex compositions.

A Legacy of Virtuosity and Grace

Today, pianists and scholars are reassessing Mendelssohn’s sonatas, recognizing them not as derivative student works but as bold and brilliant compositions in their own right. They offer a unique bridge between the late Classicism of Beethoven and the high Romanticism that would follow. They showcase a composer who was not only a supreme melodist but also a master of musical architecture, capable of manipulating sonata form with creativity and intellectual rigor. His piano writing is consistently brilliant, demanding both technical prowess and lyrical sensitivity. From the precocious G minor sonata to the ambitious E major and the stormy "Scottish," these works reveal a mind overflowing with musical ideas. They are the keyboard diaries of a young genius, capturing the moment when the discipline of the past met the passion of a new era.

This performance of Fanny Mendelssohn's piano sonatas provides context for the musical environment in which Felix composed his own works.