Although it bears an earlier opus number, Felix Mendelssohn's Quintet No. 1 for strings in A major, Op. 18, in fact postdates the famous Octet in E flat major, Op. 20. If the Octet, composed in 1825 when Mendelssohn was 16, marks the beginning of Felix's real maturity as a composer, then this Quintet, composed the following year, should probably be lined up hand-in-hand with the Midsummer Night's Dream Overture (also 1826) as the first true and full-fledged manifestation of that maturity in all its still-youthful splendor. And yet the A major Quintet is seldom performed, especially as compared to the Octet and the ubiquitous Overture.

Proximity and quality are not the only things that the Quintet, Op. 18, has in common with the Octet, Op. 20. The Octet was composed, in part, as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn's violinist friend Eduard Rietz. The Quintet, sadly, came after Rietz's death in early 1832. Mendelssohn had composed the four-movement Quintet back in 1826, as noted above; but when Rietz died he scrapped the original second movement and replaced it with a new one in honor of his late friend. It was in this revised form that the work was first published in 1832, and it is exclusively in this revised form that one will hear it played today.

The four movements of Op. 18 are: 1. Allegro con moto; 2. Intermezzo (the original second movement was a minuet); 3. Scherzo - Allegro di molto; and 4. Allegro vivace. The first movement opens with a wonderfully relaxed, plastic theme from the first violin. When this has run its course, the cello offers a more spritely idea—staccato, bouncy—which the players all take up with great affection as the basis for a second theme area. As commonly happens in Mendelssohn's string chamber music, the first violin part occasional bursts out into fire-breathing virtuoso fingerwork—stuff a good deal more flashy and flamboyant than some critics are willing to give Mendelssohn credit for being able to write.

The Intermezzo (Andante sostenuto) is at times rather dance-like. It has a prominent light dotted rhythm that never really goes away completely—even though absent during the voluptuous secondary melody it still seems to be there, lurking, informing, influencing. That secondary music surfs along on waves of warm string sounds that effectively disguise the music's focus on high-minded counterpoint.

The D minor Scherzo is begun by a solo viola, who decides at the start that the movement should take a fugal shape. The music is always running, yet seems somehow never to be short of breath—there is no musical gasping or wheezing as one so often hears in lightning-fast scherzos. The finale is vibrant, featuring great gushes up and down the players' fingerboards.

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