In 1830 the 21-year-old FELIX MENDELSSOHN – BARTHOLDY made a year-long trip to Italy, visiting Rome, Naples, Sorrento and Capri, and was delighted by the atmosphere. In a letter of 10 October 1830, he exclaimed: ‘Good God, my soul is at peace… People with flowers, in bright southern clothes, women with roses in their hair, were flocking from all sides; light cabriolets were passing, and men were going to church riding donkeys… The whole country is somehow festive and everything seems as if you were some kind of ruler-prince who has been triumphantly welcomed into it’.

The composer’s enthusiastic spirit from his encounters with people and nature other than those of the European north inspired a new symphony, started in Italy, completed in Germany, and premiered in Britain in 1833. It was titled the Italian Symphony, which was third at the time of its composition, but remains as the Fourth in numbering, following his 1840 symphony, numbered as the Second, and the Scottish Symphony, noted as the Third. The composer did not compose his first symphony until the age of 15, and his second was the Reformation Symphony (1832), which later became the Fifth. The numbering of the five symphonies gives no clue to the time of their composition and their sequence.

Mendelssohn periodically informed his sister Fanny in letters about the process of working on the Italian Symphony. After a while his enthusiasm waned and after another 11 months, this time from Paris, he reported some compositional difficulties and that he was temporarily postponing its completion. Finally in 1833 in Berlin the work became a reality and in May the Royal London Symphony Society premiered it under the composer’s baton.

The first movement is the most spontaneous and euphoric, with a basic tarantella-style theme. In the second movement the composer seems to be looking at the ruins of history in Italy – there is lyricism, contemplation, nostalgia and a certain asceticism. The third movement is a minuet in which Mendelssohn did not forget German music and inserted a sense of the style of German folk song, Schubert and Weber. The finale restores the Italianate danceability of the first movement through a theme in the spirit of the saltarella.

Mendelssohn made some corrections to the score over the course of a year or two – until 1834 – but was not active in getting it printed. It was not until 1849, two years after his death, that the edited version was first performed and in 1851 it was printed.