Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix

written on the day of the Berlin performance, thanking him for the favourable remarks concerning Paulus contained in his letter of 13 January, stating that it gives him the greatest pleasure that particularly this work should have enjoyed the approval of those dearest to him, namely the musicians, admitting that the oratorio demands a very careful performance, one which allows equally for light and shade, and one which hides the work's faults as well as rounding off the harmonious impression of the whole, acknowledging that his correspondent has been aiming at a similar performance, observing that with the lavish resources at his command at the Sing-Akademie in Berlin the success of the performance cannot be doubted, and apologizing that it was impossible for him to attend the performance  

...Aber freilich bedarf mein Oratorium einer sehr sorgfältigen Ausführung, die Licht u. Schatten doppelt hervortreten macht, hin u. wieder Mängel verdeckt, u. des Ganzen Eindruck erst harmonisch abrundet...



1 page, 4to, Leipzig, 18 January 1838, some autograph corrections, horizontal and vertical folds

Klaus Rettinghaus: 'Zehn unbekannte Berlin-Briefe von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy', Die Musikforschung, lxv (2012), p.148; Siegwart Reichwald, 'Mendelssohn as Composer/Conductor: Early Performances of Paulus', Mendelssohn in Performance, ed. Siegwart Reichwald (Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 108ff.

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 A letter about one of Mendelssohn's most famous choral works. Mendelssohn's letter is a masterpiece of tact, written to the director of the famous Berlin Sing-Akademie, Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen (1778-1851), who had succeeded Zelter as the first director in 1833, in competion with Mendelssohn (it is a reply to one of Rungenhagen's, dated 13 January 1838, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford). Although the famous institution had been responsible for shaping Felix's ideals of choral performance, the present parlous standard of musicianship threatened to derail the performance of his choral masterwork, which had received its first performance in 1836 in Düsseldorf. Through the skilful intervention and coaching of the musicians by Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny, the Berlin performance at the Sing-Akademie was in the event an unlikely success. Although this event is sometimes referred to as the first Berlin première of Paulus, the work had already been performed in the Prussian capital, in the Garnisonkirche, on 13 September 1837.