Hyperion Records

Completed on 29 January 1833, with a dedication to Moscheles, Felix Mendelssohn’s Fantasy in F sharp minor, Op 28, was originally called ‘Sonate ecossaise’. Accordingly, William S Newman (1969) suggests, ‘it belongs with the numerous nineteenth-century sonatas of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, and others, that raise the question of sonata or fantasy. In this instance the fantasy predominates over the sonata in the sense that free passagework predominates over phrase-and-period syntax, or that leading ideas tend to lose themselves in the passagework’.

The opening movement is in five sections, made up of Agitato and Andante material in alternation, with each tonic key presentation of the main Andante idea texturally or dynamically varied. The final unharmonized appearance of this measured theme, coalescing out of tierce de Picardie shadow, is striking. An A major Schubertian Scherzo in 2, with a quaver-motion ‘trio’ in the subdominant, D, comprises the second movement. Its good humour unprepares us for the dramatic contrast of the finale, a study in sonata form calling for consummate pianism to do justice to the storms and stresses of its tidal race. All three movements are linked cyclically by the same descending triadic figure – which, however, Mendelssohn artfully disguises through harmonic change or decorative elaboration.

from notes by Ates Orga © 1998