String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor

Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 (1827—that designated No. 1 came a year later) belongs to a sequence of innovative teenage pieces he began with the Octet for Strings and continued with the overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Written around the time of Beethoven’s death, it shows that composer’s influence in its cyclic form, with themes developed from one movement to the next. The first opens with an “Adagio” that quotes Mendelssohn’s love song Ist es wahr? (“Is it true?”), heading into an “Allegro vivace” whose passionate nature holds good through to a forceful coda. The “Adagio” starts gently but is soon dominated by agitated fugal writing until a return to the initial restraint, while the “Intermezzo” contrasts its elegant outer sections with an animated trio. A dramatic cadenza from the first violin launches the final “Presto”, whose unremitting rhythmic energy is only allayed by a further such cadenza that subsides into a return of the song from the introduction, its question eloquently answered.