Mendelssohn's Other Concerto: The Changing Reception of the Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 40, in D minor

Abstract

Felix Mendelssohn's two mature piano concertos, Op. 25 in G minor (1831–32) and Op. 40 in D minor (1837), were widely performed in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the D-minor Concerto fell completely out of favor and came to be regarded as a work the composer had completed hurriedly. However, the numerous extant autograph sources for the second Concerto reveal that Mendelssohn considered it worthy of the meticulous revision customary of his major artistic efforts. The problematic reception of the D-minor Concerto was due to a convergence of factors, not the least of which was the highly favorable reception of its predecessor, Op. 25, deemed historically significant due to its formal innovations. But more subtle forces also shaped the decline of Op. 40, including a perceived seriousness of musical content as opposed to popularizing virtuosic display, as well as a long history of performance by women and amateurs rather than male virtuosi. In addition, the second Piano Concerto's biographical association with Mendelssohn's 1837 honeymoon and thus with modern critiques of his all too happy, “bourgeois” marriage linked the work to a larger anti-Semitic narrative of a supposed artistic decline.