International Mendelssohn Festival 2024

Warm friendship

Friends, patrons, spouses, clergy and royalty were often the recipients of musical dedications. Mozart’s Trio in E-flat major bears a dedication to his piano pupil Franziska von Jacquin. The premiere took place in the Jacquins’ home, with Anton Stadler on the clarinet, Franziska on the piano and Mozart himself on the viola. An unusual instrumentation at the time, which proved to be a stroke of luck in chamber music. Prokofiev’s Five Melodies are a reworking of the Five Songs Without Words, which he dedicated to the soprano and personal friend Nina Koshetz. Ysaÿe dedicated each of the six solo sonatas to a different colleague, the fifth to his pupil Matthieu Chrickboom. But not every dedication is well received: César Franck wrote the dedication »To my good friend Camille Saint-Saëns« on the score of his Piano Quintet in F minor. Although Saint-Saëns played the piano part at the premiere, he was unable to do anything with the work and demonstratively left the sheet music on the piano at the end of the performance. Not a good start for a composition that is now regarded as a masterpiece from Franck’s later creative period.