Felix Mendelssohn. Piano Concerto with string orchestra in a minor: romantic principles for the renewal of the traditional genre

Abstract

The early period of F. Mendelssohn's works includes many pieces for string orchestra. If some of them are performed as a tribute to the composer, the Concerto of F. Mendelssohn, with no doubt, is actively performed all over the world. Despite great performance interest, unfortunately, it remains a “white spot” in problems and a conflict which are found on the basis of intonationcharacter analysis, which makes the relevance of the study.Main objectives of the study: fulfilling a consistent analysis of intonation-character dramaturgy; finding relationships with classicism-oriented genre models.The methodology of this study involves the use of a biographical method, which is necessary in clarifying the circumstances of the composer's life in the moment of writing the Concerto.The intonation-semantic method was used in the study of figurative dramaturgy and genre features of F. Mendelssohn's work. The comparative method is applied when appealing to the works of contemporaries of F. Mendelssohn — K. M. Weber, F. Liszt, R. Schumann.The main results and conclusions of the study take provisions that prove that this Concerto includes both the achievements of the classicism’s era and the innovation of romanticism. Moreover, in the intonation-dramaturgical (already typically romantic) conflict of “personality-reality”, the personal principle, which reveals the world of the soul, is emphasized in many ways. The reality here appears not as an immanently hostile dramatizing component, but mainly in the dimension of purely poetic perception. Such ratio of oppositional beginnings will be embodied in the great works of romantics not once. It is sufficient to add that in the genre-dramaturgical relation the considered sonata-symphonic cycle of F. Mendelssohn can be considered as one of the first tendency’s patterns of introduction to the interpretation of the traditional classicism-oriented concert of the chamberness’ principles.The significance of the article is due to its benefit for all researchers of F. Mendelssohn's work, as well as for pianists and conductors performing concerts of the composer.