Mendelssohn wrote only one piece for six chamber players: a Sextet for violin, two violas, cello, double bass, and piano in D major, Op. 110, that, despite the high opus number, is an early work. (He thus composed for one, two, three, four, five, six, and eight players—leaving only the seven-player septet breed unaccounted for!) The Sextet in D major is among those pieces published with high opus numbers many years after Mendelssohn's death; it was actually written in May 1824, when the composer was 15 years of age.

The inclusion of a double bass part in the Sextet is intriguing: one might well be surprised that so young a composer would use so unlikely an instrument in a work that otherwise adheres rigidly to chamber music tradition as extrapolated from the string quartet and the piano trio (two genres which were, after all, at the root of nearly all eighteenth-century chamber music thinking). Schubert had written his "Trout" Quintet in 1819, which involves the same instruments as this Sextet, minus one viola, but the idea that Mendelssohn knew the piece is difficult to support—Schubert was not very successful or well-known during his own lifetime.

But if the inclusion of a double bass in the mix is intriguing, the decision to use two violas instead of the more accepted two violins is, if not positively shocking, at least startling. The result is an ensemble with a real density in the middle and towards the low end of the register and with just two participants—the violinist and the pianist's right hand—to balance that out at the top. A very un-Classical registral spread, indeed. Mendelssohn was himself a good viola player and enjoyed playing the instrument, and probably the decision to double the viola participance was in part made to provide a part for himself to play. (And we might note that the first viola spends much of the Sextet playing in a very high register, simulating, in a sense, a second violin.)

The Sextet has four movements. First is an Allegro vivace that, as one might expect, offers the pianist far more to do than the other five players. Even more pronounced is the way that the pianist takes on a solo role in the Adagio second movement—it becomes clear that the decision to add a second viola was not only made to provide a part for the composer, but also specifically to make the upper register more transparent, so that the concerto-soloist-like pianist (the part was probably designed for Felix's sister Fanny) might be better heard. The Menuetto that follows is marked Agitato and has a trio built from chromatic scales. In the Allegro vivace finale the violinist, fed up to the hilt with the pianist's spotlight-grabbing antics, joins the virtuosic rush.

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