Let's have a word about Mendelssohn this week.
When I was a young lad, I knew about his incredible precocity: I had early exposure to his genius in the teenage Octet, the first chamber work to comprehensively blow me away, some time before the steely grip of Beethoven seized me by the throat. There was a lot of Mendelssohn in the house, including, surprisingly, a set of those youthful string symphonies. Overall, I wasn't that impressed, though: Mendelssohn's music, next to what was gripping my imagination as a youngster, seemed rather tame and a bit too vegetarian for a musical palate that demanded red meat.
And my rebellious consciousness recognised only two symphonies: No 4 (the Italian) and No 3 (the Scottish). I knew there was a fifth, but its title, The Reformation, put me off for years before I actually heard the thing (far too churchy for a young delinquent tearing himself free from the stranglehold of his Jesuit upbringing). I knew there was a No 2, which had a funny foreign title: I can even place it visually on the shelves in the front room where my dad stored his LPs. But I didn't go near it once I saw there were voices in it and it wasn't Beethoven Nine. (Not a real symphony at all, in other words.) Little could I have guessed that this view would persist to this day in some quarters.
Proper appreciation of Mendelssohn's symphonies has moved on a bit since the early 1960s, and I am so pleased that, at long last, the Fifth Symphony, the Reformation, seems to be gaining a foothold on the mainstream concert repertoire (but only if it's in the right hands: no sluggish, worthy, churchy interpretations, please, conductors). I've heard the Reformation in concert a couple of times in recent years. And there's a major CD project under way on the Chandos record label titled Mendelssohn In Birmingham, of which Volume One has just recently been released. It features the City of Birmingham Orchestra with conductor Edward Gardner and includes performances of the Italian and Reformation Symphonies, along with the Hebrides Overture.
But all the while that poor old Second Symphony, whose title is Lobgesang, seems to have pretty much languished in obscurity and neglect. Indeed, I was almost certain I had never heard it in concert. So I phoned the Scottish orchestras and, ever obliging, their trusty marketing and communications officers got on the case, scouring their databases and earlier card index systems in search of a single complete performance. Nobody found one. I know some extracts were played at the recent Usher Hall centenary concert, but that's not quite the same thing. And I also now know, having become very familiar with it from a new recording I reviewed a few weeks back by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra with Pablo Heras Casado, a chorus and team of soloists, that it's an absolutely fantastic piece, wholly undeserving of its widespread neglect.
Despite its numbering, it's not an early piece. Because of Mendelssohn's continual revising of his music, and differences between first performance dates and publication dates, there has long been confusion between the symphony numbers, as we now know them, and the order in which they were actually written. The youthful First Symphony was written first. Thereafter, they're all wrong. The Fifth Symphony (the Reformation), was actually written second, while the Fourth Symphony (the Italian) was written third, the symphony under discussion - the Second (Lobgesang) - was written fourth, and his final symphony, the Third (aka the Scottish), was written last.
Confused? Sorry; not my fault. Does it matter? Yes, for sheer accuracy; and probably not, if, like me, you'd rather hear a live performance in Scotland of this absolute cracker of a piece. There is no weakness in it, despite its hybrid nature. And the quality of the music, to say nothing of the subtleties of continuity that Mendelssohn lavished on the symphony, have the work, for me, now permanently resident in the topmost drawer of the composer's creations.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article