You might at first believe Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Sonata in G minor, Op. 105, to be a fairly late work; 105 separate volumes of music is, after all, a healthy life's work for a composer. But the piece is in fact one of the earliest Mendelssohn piano works, and by far the earliest to possess an opus number—a possession made possible not because its composer gave it one but because, when it was dug up and published 20 years after Mendelssohn died, its publishers gave it one. Hence the apparent contradiction of opus number and date of composition. (The same story pertains to the Sonata in B flat major, Op. 106, though it is not so early a work as Op. 105.)

Seen or heard next to the limber, uniquely-formed E major Sonata, Op. 6, of 1826, the G minor Piano Sonata seems an absolutely cut-and-dried piece of music—one might indeed expect such from a 12-year-old composer. It has three movements, none particularly long, each absolutely traditional in architecture and gesture. The Allegro first movement has undercurrents of dark passion (not, perhaps, genuinely felt, but rather an artistic simulation—Mendelssohn's cheery disposition as a boy is quite well-acknowledged) that allow for some moments of real value in the short development. The middle movement is an Adagio in E flat major, and the finale a Presto providing some tintinnabular right hand exercise.

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