Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) – Andante und Allegro assai vivace, Op. 92 (1841)

“You know I am always ready to [perform with you] and am always thinking of playing something with you whenever you want to give me that pleasure.”  So wrote Felix Mendelssohn to Clara Wieck Schumann in response to her letter asking him to perform with her in a  concert on 31 March 1841.  Felix exceeded Clara’s expectations by composing his Andante und Allegro assai vivace, Op. 92 for the occasion.  The two close friends had performed many times together, often with Felix conducting Clara in piano concertos. 

Clara's daughter Eugenie claimed that “it always gave him [Felix] great pleasure to take really lively tempos with her [Clara] in the four-hand works they played together, especially when they were sight-reading.”  Once past the conversational Andante that opens the work, the brilliant Allegro assai vivace illustrates the kind of high-spirited, virtuosic playing the two pianists must have enjoyed.  Ernest Lubin (The Piano Duet) notes that the work is cast in the same key, time signature and character as the opening movement of Mendelssohn’s boisterous Italian Symphony. 

—- Notes by Dana Muller & Gary Steigerwalt