Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op.56 Scottish
Andante con moto – Allegro un poco agitato – Andante come prima
Vivace non troppo
Adagio
Allegro vivacissimo (guerriero) – Allegro maestoso assai
“When God himself takes to panorama painting it turns out strangely beautiful. Few of my Switzerland reminiscences can compare to this; everything looks so stern and robust, half enveloped in haze or smoke or fog … In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved; a little room is shown there with a winding staircase leading up to the door; up this way they came and found Rizzio in that little room… and three rooms off there is a dark corner, where they murdered him. The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scotch symphony.”
Thus wrote the 20 year old Mendelssohn to his family from Edinburgh on 30th July 1829. There followed the much documented visits to Sir Walter Scott and to the Hebrides – out of which grew the eponymous concert overture which the eminent Mendelssohn scholar Philip Radcliffe considered to be his masterpiece. Its first version was actually written down in Italy during December the following year – its 17 month gestation period substantially briefer than that of the promised symphony which, although occupying his thoughts in the early part of 1831, soon had to give way to another symphony which the local colour surrounding him in Rome had implanted in his mind: hence the Italian symphony (known as No.4) was completed fully nine years ahead of the Scottish (No.3).
By this time much had happened in his life to affect the nature of his musical language: some would see it as that welcome maturity and wisdom which comes naturally with growing older, whilst to others the miraculous explosion of unprecedented teenage musical genius was gradually but inexorably fading, and giving way to a disappointingly conventional comfort zone. The shimmering brilliance of the Octet, the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, the Hebrides, the Italian; then, the Hymn of Praise, Elijah – so beloved of “Victorian” England. Yet on 20th June 1842, fully six visits to Britain after that first encounter with Scottish mists and sea swell, and a week after the composer had conducted the British première of his “Scotch” symphony for the Philharmonic Society, the Queen and Prince Albert received him at Buckingham Palace. His account of the young monarch’s vivacity does not exactly fit with the image of her that has come down to us across the decades. Her symphony – for it was subsequently dedicated to her – is in some ways itself contradictory: the melancholy image of the ruined Holyrood chapel at the beginning – but the blaze of glory at the end? Mendelssohn left us a clue when he entitled the finale Allegro guerriero – suggesting the main part of the movement represents a battle. So is the coda a triumphant victory? Or a hollow one? Philip Radcliffe himself once confided to me (he was my Supervisor at Cambridge) his regret that Mendelssohn hadn’t at that point returned to the Holyrood music, ending the symphony quietly, after the manner of the Opp.12 and 13 string quartets. It is for each listener to make up his/her own mind; be assured we (the Academy of St Olaves, York) will be playing it for all its worth, following the spirit and the letter of the composer’s instructions in the score!
Indeed, we have been thrilled by working at this fantastic symphony, discovering that in order to make it truly come alive we need to continue many of the lessons learned from playing Beethoven’s symphonies – particularly with regard to tempo/metronome marks, dynamics, accents, and the rhythmic energy required from the inner string parts. Additionally, it has to be said that performances on period instruments during the past 35 years or so have once again revealed the true colours of Mendelssohn’s vivid orchestral imagination, where for too long we have put up (unknowingly) with a somewhat turgid thickness. “Panorama painting” indeed!
© Alan George
