Who Writes a Great Symphony at age 15?

The Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra opened its season Sunday night with a high-quality performance featuring the little-played First Symphony (C minor, op. 11) of Mendelssohn (1809-1849), written when he was 15 years old. This was written just after he had written the 13 string symphonies, and one year before the masterful Octet for strings. This teenager had obviously been honing his craft amidst intense study of past composers, esp. Bach. The symphony is written for strings plus paired woodwinds, trumpets, and horns. The amazing thing about this early work is how complete and polished each of the four  movements are. Most romantic symphonies have at least one dull or filler movement. Not here. The finale may go on just a bit long, but Mendelssohn just had to insert two (not one) iterations of a fugue, reflecting the influence of Bach on the young composer. Conductor Pedro Neves, conducting without a baton,  drew forth a crisp, well articulated performance from the orchestra, never letting the pace sag. String playing was very uniform and vibrant. An interesting innovation was the conductor's choice to insert three short solo instrumental passages (for oboe, violin, and flute) by Portuguese composer Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) between each of the movements. The inclusion was intended to unify some of the themes of the orchestra's upcoming season, which features works by Braga Santos, Mendelssohn and Mozart. Despite being written in the 20th century and not always being in the succeeding  key of the movement, the passages fit rather nicely, and functioned a bit like an amuse-bouche between courses of a French dinner. 

The first half of the concert featured Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture (aka Fingal's Cave), inspired by his recent visit to the Scottish isles. 

Here the playing was a bit less tight than in the symphony, and I wish the conductor had found more of the wildness, spookiness and darkness heard in some performances. He chose a more lyric approach, varying the tempo and slowing at times, rather than maintaining steady pulse. This was a reasonable choice, just not the one I like. The first half ended with a fine performance of the Mozart third Horn Concerto in E flat, written in 1784-7 for a virtuosic horn player-friend. Horn concerti were (and remain) unusual in the Classical era, since the horn then still mostly lacked valves and was very difficult to play. Mozart's concerti test the limits of the player, even those now using the modern valved horn as was done here by soloist Daniel Canas. His performance was perky and delightful, with a rapid finale that was very impressive. 

Overall, this was a fine beginning to the season for this excellent orchestra.