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The acclaimed Elias Quartet play quartets by the Mendelssohn siblings, recorded live at Wigmore Hall on Sunday.

As a composer, until near the end of the 20th century, Fanny was condescendingly regarded as a dilettante dabbler, an inconsequential footnote in the biography of her famous brother. But confined by circumstances and society’s expectations to write almost always in small intimate forms – piano miniatures and songs – for domestic performance, Fanny nonetheless produced some larger scale works, including her String Quartet in E flat. Her brother disapproved of what he regarded as its undisciplined approach to form but Fanny never changed it, and it’s remarkable and memorable music.

Dark, full of emotional tension and aguish, Felix’s final String Quartet was written in the aftermath of his beloved sister’s death in May, 1847. Later that same year, Felix, too, was dead.

Felix’s Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81 is an attractive but disparate collection of four posthumously published pieces cobbled together by his publisher. The earliest, an ingeniously wrought fugue, dates from his teenage years and the Capriccio from 1843 seems to prefigure the Violin Concerto of the following year. The remaining two pieces, from the final year of Felix’s life, might have been planned for an uncompleted string quartet: a charming theme and variations and a prime example of a scurrying, effervescent Mendelssohnian Scherzo.

Presented by Ian Skelly.

Felix Mendelssohn: Andante sostenuto and Variations Op 81 No 1
Scherzo Op 81 No 2
Capriccio Op 81 No 3
Fugue Op 81 No 4
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E flat
Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet No 6 in F minor Op 80

Elias String Quartet