The three pieces that would eventually come together as Felix Mendelssohn's Three Preludes, Opus 104a, were all composed in late 1836, during the second season of his tenure as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and, perhaps more significantly, just shortly after the 27-year-old composer's engagement to 19-year-old Cécile Charlotte Sophia Jeanrenaud of Scheveningen. But if, after taking that then-recent and life-changing commitment into consideration, one should happen to expect any wan Romanticism in the music of Op. 104a, one is certain to wind up disappointed. There is no hint of sentimentality here, and to the wonderfully aristocratic musician that was Felix Mendelssohn, the idea of pouring such personalized introspection into his own music was a most unpleasant one. The Three Preludes are instead all fast and dynamic: each bears some variety of Allegro as a tempo indication, each takes up its own rhythmic figuration, and none ever abandons that rapid-fire figuration or shifts tempo once begun.

Op. 104a, No. 1 is an Allegro molto e vivace (how about that for fast?—one wonders that he didn't find a way to work a "presto" in their as well!) in B flat major, full of staccati in both hands—sometimes the left hand has to play lightning-quick octave staccati; no treat for the tendons, to be sure—and loud and fiery the whole way through. The music is not violent, though, but rich and vibrant: a celebration, perhaps, not of an upcoming marriage, but of the more unique gift of brilliant, virtuoso pianism.

The second Prelude is every bit as smooth, as legato, as the first one was pointed and spiky. It is in B minor and bears the marking Allegro agitato. A thirty-second-note accompaniment, sometimes in the bass, sometimes in an inner voice, carries the song without words-type melody of the right hand along on its back.

Closing the Op. 104a set is an Allegro vivace in D major, throughout which the pianist's two hands join together to offer one dramatically plunging sixteenth-note scale after another—a florid middle-voice counterpoint to the Prelude's martial main tune.

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