For instance, Mendelssohn’s Op. 12, reveals some modeling after Beethoven’s Op. 74, and in Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 there are traces of the outer movements of Beethoven’s Op. 132, which was written just a couple of years earlier. In addition, Beethoven’s Op. 95 inspired the fugue in this latter Mendelssohn quartet.

“It seems paradoxical to say that when he was modeling after a great composer, Mendelssohn was showing traits of an original mind, but you have to remember how hard it was to digest Beethoven’s quartets when they first came out,” Drucker says. “Yet Mendelssohn was able to produce something of similar intensity, though not of the same overwhelming scope; Op. 13 is an astonishingly emotional statement for an 18-year-old.

“You have to put aside questions of originality, because for Mendelssohn, the point is the intensity of the emotions and the vastness of his intellect.”

In the three quartets of Op. 44, Mendelssohn is not doing the cyclical thing anymore at all, Drucker adds, so one can’t say these quartets are predictable because every time Mendelssohn writes a scherzo he does something different. “In Op. 44, No. 1, he’s structured it like a minuet, but it doesn’t sound like one because it has long-flowing lines instead of a dance character,” he explains. “In No. 2, you have a brilliant scherzo of fast notes and challenging bowing issues. You also have a more disjunct scherzo in Op. 44, No. 3, but it’s dark and scurrying and furtive—quite different from the E-major scherzo of Op. 44, No. 2.

“He’s always finding novel solutions in terms of the moods of the music and certain structural things, like in the scherzo of No. 3, which has two fugal sections.

“The Op. 80, in F minor, he wrote shortly before he died, and right after his sister Fanny died, which was a terrible blow to him. Its brooding intensity never lets up. Three of the movements are in F minor, and the slow movement is poised between Ab major and F minor; it’s often ambiguous. In the early music of Mendelssohn, no matter how much passion there is, there’s some kind of relief or resolution, but you don’t get that in Op. 80. You sense that Mendelssohn’s deepest, most vulnerable feelings are on display here.”

Even though Mendelssohn lived to be only 38, his work possesses a wide range of emotions and an extremely varied use of the medium, as evidenced in the expanse of music from the early quartets to Op. 80 and the Andante and Scherzo of Op. 81, where Drucker feels the composer seemed to have some peace of mind restored.

“That’s why we think this music deserves frequent hearings,” he says.


The only thing that has limited hearings of Mendelssohn’s more popular Octet is the fact that one quartet can’t go it alone. Unless, that is, you’re the determined Emerson Quartet, with a first-rate producer-engineer named Da-Hong Seetoo, who built a high-speed computer—highly customized for audio applications—especially for this project.

Drucker, who over the years has played the Octet’s first, third, and fourth violin parts, points out that the work is by no means a simple double quartet, able to be split neatly into two instrumental halves. “There’s a constant interchanging of material and changing of roles,” he says. “There are pairs of instruments, and groups of three, groups of four—every possibility is explored. We wanted to record a first layer that had musical continuity, but you couldn’t do that with all four people playing the same roles all the way through, except in the scherzo. Our violist and cellist (Lawrence Dutton and David Finckel) had to switch quite frequently from first to second in each of the other movements in the first layer. There were a lot of decisions to make about which material had priority for that first layer.

“In the slow movement, for example, there’s a long, lilting passage in octaves between the first viola and first cello. The question was, should the two of them record it at the same time so they’re listening to each other and making the slight adjustments you normally do along the way in chamber music, or should one be playing something else during the first layer and then come back and match what the other person did? We opted to have them both play the octave passages together. But in other cases we opted for more contrapuntal activity, rather than doubling voices.”

As for the violin parts, Drucker enjoys each of the three he has played, although he’s naturally partial to the first-violin role. “It’s almost like a concerto,” he says, “more nerve-racking and more gratifying than playing the other parts. The first violin part is quite challenging; in terms of exposure it sails above the other parts in the Octet, so you need a soloistic approach to it. But the second violin has great solos, too, especially near the end of the last movement; the first violin is playing a filigree of fast notes, but the second is weaving in and out with a romantic melody. The fourth has juicy, brief solos in the first two movements. And since there’s a fugue in the last movement, every instrument has an important contribution to make.”

Drucker advises string players approaching the Octet to be alert for certain trouble spots.

“The scherzo requires extreme lightness and delicacy,” he says, “so you need a lot of bow control and the first violin needs a good trill technique. I always practice trill exercises before I approach the scherzo. I have various drilling routines I put myself through on the trill passage itself in the middle of the scherzo, so I can play it without slowing down the tempo inordinately. I say ‘inordinately’ because I think everybody slows down a little for that section.

“The beginning of the last movement is difficult because you have this fugal opening where every instrument plays the same material, and that’s where you hear the difference in bow techniques. You don’t want a crazy quilt of some people playing on the string, some playing off the string. The music builds from the second cello, going up the ensemble, and you have to make sure you can hear the primary material all the time.

“Also, there’s a famous passage toward the end of the slow movement where the second viola plays triplets, mostly repeated notes with an occasional slur, and it’s difficult for the other instruments to do all the nuances in their parts but remain together with that triplet ostinato.”

At this stage, the only thing about Mendelssohn’s Octet that perplexes Drucker is the composer’s admonition that the music should be played “in the style of a symphony.”

“I’m not exactly sure what that statement meant,” he says, “except that all the dynamic markings need to be followed scrupulously, which for the most part we do, except sometimes people play more softly to make sure the other lines are heard clearly. We definitely regard this as chamber music, but it’s on the cusp of something symphonic.”