Music: Found: New Mendelssohn

When he was 15, Felix Mendelssohn composed two E-flat double-piano concertos. Never published, they gradually dropped out of sight. Last week a 30-year-old Italian announced that he had turned them up.

The finder, Pianist Orazio Frugoni, now teaching at Baylor University, got his first firm clue in 1949, from an unpublished Mendelssohn letter in a private collection. He traced the manuscripts of the two concertos to a Berlin family, and thence to the Berlin State Library in the Russian zone.

After a long correspondence, during which Frugoni melted the library with a gift of books, he got microfilm prints of the two works.

Last week he showed the scores to Dallas Symphony Conductor Walter Hendl. Hendl took a liking to one in particular. Said he: “It is typical Mendelssohn, with a strong overtone of early romanticism. The piano-writing compares favorably with Mendelssohn’s G minor Piano Concerto [written at 22]. The orchestral portions, while not imbued with the personality of the Beethoven or Brahms accompaniments, are not as insignificant as Chopin’s.”

Frugoni hopes to play it with the Dallas Symphony next fall.