Concertino: C.P.E. Bach, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Shostakovich, Beethoven

Long wanderings in minor keys, youthful pieces, last compositions, composers at the boundaries of musical eras – the Budapest Festival Orchestra will close its season in Hungary with a highly colorful program spanning several centuries. This time again, the Concertino series offers some of the most diverse works composed for strings. After a symphony by Bach’s son, who foreshadowed the classical era, the violin concerto by a 13-year-old Mendelssohn will be performed. The soloist in the latter will be István Kádár, five-time winner of the BFO’s Sándor Végh competition, who won for the first time in 2004 with this very piece. After the interval, the program will continue with one of the few minor key compositions by Mozart, followed by Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8. arranged for a string orchestra. The concert, led by BFO concertmaster Daniel Bard, will end with a movement in one of the last compositions of Beethoven.

Bach’s second and most famous son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, was a precursor to the Classical music period. He composed a set of six string symphonies in Hamburg for the Viennese concerts of Baron Gottfried van Swieten in 1773. The piece written in B minor in the early Classical three-movement format is characterized by sharp shifts in dynamics, boldly juxtaposed motifs, and unusual harmonies. The fast-pace opening movement flows attacca into the graceful but harmonically tense slow movement resolved in a dance-like finale.

The child prodigy Mendelssohn composed his first and later disowned violin concerto at the age of thirteen. He dedicated it to his teacher, Eduard Rietz. The composition, discovered by Yehudi Menuhin in the 1950s, shows the influence of the French violin school, as well as the traditions of the string symphonies of C. P. E. Bach. Bach’s style can be detected mostly in the melody lines of the opening movement. The warm andante seems almost Mozartian and the finale reflects the virtuoso tendencies of the composer’s era.

Mozart briefly described the piece as “a short Adagio for two violins, viola and bass for a fugue I wrote a long time ago for two pianos”. The pair of movements has a special place in his oeuvre in more ways than one. On the one hand, the key of C minor renders it more somber than most of Mozart's works. On the other hand, it reflects the composer's studies of Bach, as composing a fugue is clearly Bach’s legacy. However, here it is preceded by an adagio written in 1788, rather than a prelude.

Shostakovich composed his own personal tragedies and the horrors of the second world war into his most popular quartet. “To the victims of fascism and the war”, says the title page of the score. However, Shostakovich would have wanted to write instead, as a swan song, “Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet”. A tense, dark opening movement, an agitated scherzo invoking a Jewish tune, waltz-like skeleton music, a pessimistic slow movement and a finale fading into a death sentence (morendo) follow one another – this time, in Rudolf Barshai’s arrangement, acknowledged also by the composer.

No unfettered joy will be brought by the only major key piece of the concert, either. However, it will bring great beauty. The String Quartet in B-flat major, composed in 1826, is one of Beethoven’s last works. In November, the piece was given a new finale – this movement might be his last composition. The old master called the six-part work his “dear” quartet, and its fifth movement, the melancholy Cavatina moved him to tears. This music, defined as a song, is infinitely intimate and heartbreaking.