There are two individual works (meaning self-standing works that are not part of larger bodies) in Felix Mendelssohn's catalog of piano music that go by the name "Scherzo." The earlier, the Scherzo in B minor of 1829, is a two-page mite of a piece, short and charming. The Scherzo a capriccio in F sharp minor that Mendelssohn composed during the mid-1830s is, on the other hand and by comparison to its miniature sister piece of 1829, a massive example of the species—eight dense, repeat-filled pages and six or seven minutes in length, intricate and exhausting for the performer, brilliant and scampering for the listener.

The Scherzo a capriccio has not led a charmed life, so far as posterity's attention has been concerned; it is not played often enough to become really familiar with its quite remarkable qualities as a piece of music. Horowitz made a wonderful recording of it, and some pianists are happy to leave it at that. But it deserves better.

The piece is marked Presto scherzando and takes off on a rhythm borrowed from the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony—but the actual gestures are such that they form wholly fresh ideas. A more lyric notion pops up on the second page—after the opening dotted idea has been given a full binary treatment—and henceforth the two ideas take turns, section by section.

The pianist who opts to learn the Scherzo a capriccio will soon learn the value of a supple hand; for there are enough repeated rhythms—single tones, octaves, thirds, and even chords—to cause a nice case of tendinitis for an unsuspecting stiff-armed applicant. The music goes like the wind, without violence but with the anxiety-throttle pressed fully, turning here from quietude to sharply-accented volume, there from pin-drop articulations to smooth lines and back again to the articulations.

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