Classical Works Spotlight #355--Mendelssohn

[erik]

The dark side of Felix Mendelssohn is revealed in the frightening large-scale cantata that is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight.

Mendelssohn: DIE ERSTE WALPURGISNACHT (THE FIRST WALPURGIS NIGHT). OP. 60

If the music Felix Mendelssohn composed for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” represented the lighter side of the composer, then his adaptation of Johann von Goethe’s “The First Walpurgis Night” (“Die Erste Walpurgisnacht”, in German) is the darker side. The product of a meeting the composer had with Germany’s most famous poet in 1821, when Mendelssohn was but a mere twelve year old, this work, a dark secular cantata, is based on a legend in German tradition of witches cavorting on a mountain known as the Brocken (or Blocksburg), the tallest of the Harz Mountains in Germany, on April 30th (the “Walpurgis Night” of the title). The cantata, though only slightly over a half hour in length, has orchestration that even goes past the use of cymbals and bass drums in the Wedding March of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and includes piccolo and trombones as well. Mendelssohn had completed an initial first version of it fairly fast in 1821, an enormously ambitious work for the young composer, but he extensively revised it over the next twenty-plus years before finally publishing it in 1843 as his Opus 60. Much of what Mendelssohn was attempting was, by the composer’s own admission, inspired not only by Goethe’s ballad, but also the composer’s impressions of Carl Maria von Weber’s dark opera “Der Freischutz”, which were very good ones (this was, along with his Second Symphony, a choral symphony of sorts known as “Lobgesang”, as close as the composer would ever get to creating an opera). Although it has fairly large orchestration, and the choral text is completely in German, it is not so overtly difficult to perform; however, it has not quite attained the same popularity as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, though its macabre sonic imagery occasionally means it will be heard close to Halloween.



Mezzo-Soprano: CHRISTINE CAIRNS
Tenor: JON GARRISON
Baritone: TOM RAUSE
Bass-Baritone: JEFFREY WELLS

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (Robert Page, choral director)

Cleveland Orchestra/CHRISTOPH VON DOHNANYI (Telarc)

Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN A MINOR, OP. 56 (SCOTTISH)

[egoodstein]

I have to reacquaint myself with this work, though I do recall something of a departure and 'strong' subject for Mendelssohn. Interesting point about the Weber influence. I like some of his later (or relatively later) choral works, like the religious oratorios Paulus, Elijah, and the like. These vocal works deserve some attention. And of course his lieder/songs are very nice, if better known perhaps. He was a fine orchestrator too, and deeper, more profound than sometimes credited. Good to see his works beyond just Midsummer's Night Dream and the Symphonies (as nice as they are) getting more serious attention in the past 30 years or so. Terrific composer who like Mozart and Schubert may've been hailed even more if he'd had a longer life.

[erik]

I think Mendelssohn, though he had a fairly abbreviated life, nevertheless managed to make the most of it; and he did make "Die Erste Walpurginacht" into a fairly frightening work that is, strangely, not heard nearly enough by audiences, despite its fairly concise length; it is, in my mind, as hair-raising as Mussorgsky's later macabre masterpiece "A Night On Bald Mountain."