Works for Piano Four-hands

Fingering: Andreas Groethuysen

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy knew that he could rely on his highly gifted sister Fanny as a partner in four-hand piano pieces. While he wrote only a few works of this sort, the two pieces presented here are superb examples of the genre. The Andante con variazioni, op. 83, presents a further development of his cycle of the same name for piano two-hands.

The Duet – Andante and Allegro assai vivace – was formerly known as the Allegro brillant, op. 92. This latter, however, is only the first version of the work, from which the lovely slow introduction is still missing.

Henle Verlag is now publishing Mendelssohn’s complete and revised final version for the first time; the early version is also provided, in an Appendix, for purposes of comparison.