Felix Mendelssohn never took much interest in woodwind instruments outside their domain in the symphony orchestra. There is, of course, the Overture for wind instruments, Op. 24, of 1824 (which is really scored in an orchestral manner), but beyond that, Mendelssohn's catalog is almost completely barren of wind compositions. There are just three such works: two concert pieces for clarinet, basset horn, and piano, and a Sonata in E flat major for clarinet and piano. The last of these, like the Wind Overture, was composed in 1824 when Mendelssohn was still in his mid-teens.

Little is known of the circumstances surrounding the composition of the Clarinet Sonata, and in fact it is only in the last quarter century that the work has entered the repertory—it was unpublished and obscure, its autograph unseen by any save a select few Mendelssohn scholars, until Bärenreiter issued it in 1987. It is a three-movement work with a substantial Adagio introduction to the Allegro moderato first movement; there is, then, something of the Baroque slow-fast-slow-fast four movement structure to the piece.

The opening Adagio has a great deal of Mozart in it—listen, for example, to the steady quarter-note melody in 3/4 time and its three gentle pick-up notes, or to the gentle sixteenth-note rustling in the piano. The chromatic tinge on those sixteenth notes is, however, all Mendelssohn. The fast body of the first movement is the usual sonata-allegro form; its second theme area features a lengthy passage of hand-against-hand arpeggios in the piano, a kind of repetitive figuration that leans forward very strongly to the Romantic piano character piece.

The middle movement of the sonata is an Andante in G minor whose lightly melancholic main melody is announced at the very opening by the clarinet without any help or support from the piano. The Allegro moderato finale is, on the other hand, a joint effort throughout; its opening idea, with its descending two-note gestures, is very much like the main thought of the finale of Mozart's famous B flat major Violin Sonata (K. 454).

© Blair Johnston, All Music Guide