Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriccioso

I listened to an enjoyable performance of Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso on Naxos. The performer was Jane Coop. She was not particularly creative in the introduction, but her tempos in the presto section were exciting. Her lyricism was simple yet beautiful. I liked the surprise she gave at the end: her octave oscillations were exciting and successfully pedaled.

The piece itself is full of different styles and textures. The introduction reminds me of some of Mendelssohn’s songs without words. It features the traditional three-part
Scoring strategy: singing style melody, slowly changing pedal bass, and rhythmic chords in the middle voice. This set up allows for a lot of expression. The right is hand free to control the dynamic and flexible melody while the left hand has a lot of room for expressive shading and directional crescendos and decrescendos. The constant eighth-note figures allows the performing to control, support, and shape the melodic line. The constantly changing articulations and ornamental figuration reminds me of Chopin and the empfindsamar stile (sensitive unpredictable melodic line, having a lament or melancholic character).

The presto section (the rondo statement) features rapid imitation between the hands. They frequently swap this sixteen-note mordent figure. The excitement of this section comes from the rhythmic drive, alternating articulations (two-note slurs and staccato), and the contrary motion of the parts. I love how Mendelssohn inserts this melodic dance in the middle of this brilliant style passage. On repetition of this dance, he changes the texture completely. He places the melody in the left hand two octaves lower, he adds a P dynamic, and includes these sweeping right-hand arpeggios. He cleverly juxtaposes the two contrasting styles into one section later in the piece. Here the right-hand features chords with melodic implications. The left-hand sustains the traditional slow bass changes with the mordent figure from the presto section constantly being reiterated. After a section that repeats this brilliant style (characterized by rapid right-hand motion), Mendelssohn once again plays around with the contrast between the lyrical and the rhythmic. He states a rhythmic fragmentation from the main rondo theme twice. After this he creates contrast by immediately inserting a conjunct lyrical line. He overlaps this with another fragment of the rhythmic motive and continues this cycle a couple times.

So we have seen a few ways in which Mendelssohn has worked with two basic motivic ideas and transformed them from individual entities, to combined entities, to conversational entities (alternating dialogue between hands). The section after the brilliant passage work slowly decrescendos and brings down the excitement of the piece. Here the texture becomes increasingly thin and the length of any one idea shortens until only the rhythmic motive, virtually functioning as a bass pedal with embellishment leads to a surprise ending. Mendelssohn ends with an exciting, non-melodic, non-structural textural effect, which draws the piece to a close.