Programme Notes

FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY 1809-1847

NOTTURNO FOR WIND INSTRUMENTS Op 24

Andante

Allegro vivace

The tradition of 'Harmoniemusik', played by groups of wind musicians in the service of aristocratic families, began in the early eighteenth century and petered out some 150 years later. Essentially it was background music, originally intended mainly for outdoor performance, but in some households the band was required to play during meals or to accompany a fashionable soirée. The custom greatly enriched the classical repertoire for wind instruments: it gave rise to Mozart's great wind serenades and divertimenti, a number of fine works by Beethoven and the spirited wind octets of Franz Krommer and much more besides. Dvorák's Serenade Op 44 of 1878 is one of the last examples of the genre although we should also include Elgar's early wind quintets of 1879 which, with a nod to musical history, he called Harmony Music.

Mendelssohn's Notturno, too, composed in 1824, belongs to this fertile and civilised tradition. The piece is scored for a double wind quintet, plus trumpet and contra-bassoon (or string bass). The opening Andante has enough of the character of a nocturnal serenade to justify the piece's title, and the ensuing Allegro vivace is in the brilliant, euphoric vein we associate with Mendelssohn's better-known music.

The Notturno belongs to that extraordinarily precocious period of Mendelssohn's life when he had already created two masterpieces -- the Octet for strings and the Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream: this evening's piece for Wind Instruments has the same ebullience and vivacity as those two works. It has the composer's signature on every bar.

Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©

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