DESCRIPTION:
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

String Symphony No. 11 in F major (1823)

00:00 - Adagio - Allegro molto
12:13 - Scherzo. Comodo (Schweizerlied)
16:06 - Adagio
23:54 - Menuetto. Allegro moderato
28:19 - Allegro molto

Performed by Nicholas Ward and the Northern Chamber Orchestra.

"String Symphony No. 11 in F major was not numbered and is a more extended work than the others, with its five movements. It starts with a solemn Adagio introduction, followed by an Allegro in which traces of Mozart or of Schubert might be detected, yet with an increasingly original voice. There is a return to the mood of the opening before the movement comes to an energetic and dramatic end. The Scherzo that follows makes use of a Swiss folk-song, an Emmental wedding-dance, a provenance that suggests the final use of percussion. This reminiscence of a holiday in Switzerland is absorbed into a more sophisticated classical musical idiom, in the manner of Haydn, until its last re-appearance. There is an Adagio of gently moving beauty and mature assurance, leading to a Minuet, a burst of energy that provides an immediate contrast, relaxing into a more lyrical Trio. The last movement includes the necessary late classical ingredient of counterpoint in its fugal writing, a Baroque legacy from which Mendelssohn had profited and which he here absorbs into an idiom increasingly his own." - Keith Anderson

Background: Two Studies of Women, Jean-Antoine Watteau