Mendelssohn's Piano Trios
Two works — the D minor, Op. 49, and the C minor, Op. 66 — that stand among the most beloved in the entire piano-trio literature, and that give this site its name.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) wrote comparatively little chamber music for piano and strings, but what he wrote has never left the repertoire. His two mature piano trios are fixtures of the concert hall, studied by students and returned to by the greatest ensembles. They are the reason the phrase "Mendelssohn piano trio" resonates far beyond any single performing group, and they are the honest anchor for a companion to the genre.
The D minor, Op. 49 (1839)
The first trio opens with one of the most famous melodies in chamber music: a long, surging theme given first to the cello over rippling piano, soon taken up by the violin. It is music of immediate warmth and forward motion, and it announced at once that Mendelssohn had written something special. Robert Schumann, reviewing the work, called Mendelssohn "the Mozart of the nineteenth century" and named the D minor trio "the master-trio of the age," ranking it beside the great trios of Beethoven and Schubert. The slow movement is a Lied ohne Worte — a song without words — in all but name; the scherzo is the quicksilver, gossamer fairy-music that is Mendelssohn's signature; and the finale drives to a major-key blaze of triumph.
The C minor, Op. 66 (1845)
The second trio, written six years later, is darker, grander and more symphonic. Where Op. 49 charms, Op. 66 storms. Its first movement is turbulent and tightly argued; its finale famously weaves in a Lutheran chorale melody, Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, which rises through the texture to crown the work in radiant C major. Mendelssohn dedicated the trio to the violinist and composer Louis Spohr. Many musicians consider it the greater of the two, even if the first remains the more frequently played. Both survive in numerous editions and in the composer's autograph sources documented by scholars at institutions such as the Library of Congress music division.
Why they endure
Mendelssohn's gift was for a melodic freshness that never turns saccharine and a craftsmanship so complete that the difficulty disappears. The piano parts are brilliant — Mendelssohn was himself a dazzling pianist — yet they never bury the strings; the balance the genre demands is solved with apparent ease. For a fuller account of his life and output, the Encyclopædia Britannica entry is a reliable starting point.
A note on performance
Both trios make formidable demands, above all on the pianist. Mendelssohn's keyboard writing glitters with rapid figuration, yet it is laid out so that the strings are never buried — the difficulty is technical, not textural. The works were championed from the first by fine players; the violinist Ferdinand David, Mendelssohn's concertmaster in Leipzig, was closely associated with them. Today the two trios anchor countless recital programmes and are among the first Romantic works a serious student ensemble takes up, precisely because they teach the balance the whole genre depends on.
Their place in the story
The Mendelssohn trios sit at a hinge in the history of the form, looking back to the Classical models of Haydn and Beethoven and forward to the full Romantic outpouring of Schumann, Brahms and Dvořák. To hear how they have been performed on record, see the survey of landmark recordings.