Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy was the grandson of Felix Mendelssohn. He was also a polymathic intellectual a prestigious jurist, political scientist, and one of Germanys observers to the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919. Conscious of his heritage he also wrote songs, taking texts from Eichendorff, Goethe, Heine and the folk collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, as had Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. These ardent love songs were inspired by his student Magdalene Lena Schoch who, soon after her graduation, became the composers indispensable and trusted colleague and confidante. Through songs Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy was able to reveal and profess his true sentiments, in a form seemingly acceptable to his family. And by setting to music poets whom Felix and Fanny had chosen earlier (Eichendorff, Goethe, Heine, and the folk song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn), Albrecht paid tribute to his ancestors while consciously joining the lineage of the Mendelssohn familys musical tradition. Albrechts commitment to the cultural heritage of his hometown is reflected in his frequent choice of lesser\-known poets from Karlsruhe.

MENDELSSOHN Elijah • Paul McCreesh, cond; Rosemary Joshua (sop); Sarah Connolly (mez); Robert Murray (ten); Simon Keenlyside (bar); Jonty Ward (tr); Gabrieli Consort; Gabrieli Players; Wroc?aw P Ch; Chetham’s C Ch; North East Youth Ch; Taplow Youth Ch; Ulster Youth C Ch; William Whitehead (org) • SIGNUM SIGCD 300 (2 CDs: 135:58)


Period-performance practice is often loosely associated with smallish forces—but it doesn’t need to be; and although McCreesh happily claims responsibility for the first recording of St. Matthew Passion using a one-to-a-part vocal contingent, he’s also been interested in reproducing the blockbusters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries as they were first heard, with big choruses and surprisingly large period-instrument orchestras. He’s already given us The Creation and the Berlioz Requiem in recordings that approximate the forces of their premieres; now we get a period Elijah that’s modeled on the Birmingham first performance of 1846. What precisely does this mean? For the solo numbers, we have a hefty, but hardly unusual orchestral group. But to accompany the nearly 300-voice chorus, the strings are pumped up by half; woodwinds, trumpets, and drums are doubled; the ophicleide is tripled; and three serpents are thrown into the mix. The result is an orchestra of well more than a hundred. There are other big Elijah s out there, of course, but I suspect that there are none on quite this scale. I’ve heard the Mahler Eighth performed by a smaller crowd.


What’s the benefit, besides increased volume in the climaxes? Well, increased volume is not to be sneered at, but there’s a lot more. The alterations in orchestral size provide additional tonal and emotional variety; the period instruments (which include slide trumpets) provide unusual bursts of color (listen, for example to the tangy sting of the horn stabs in “Though thousands languish” or the gleam of the brass tone in “Baal, we cry to thee”). Most important, though, there’s an audible and striking shift in tonal balance. People often think of Mendelssohn’s music as light, with a treble tilt—and that’s true, say, of the Fourth Symphony or A Midsummer Night’s Dream . But it’s certainly not the case with this Elijah : McCreesh’s performance gives prominence to the bass lines—in part by the use of serpents to double the choral basses, in part by the presence of the extra ophicleides (one of which is a contrabass ophicleide, apparently the only one that still exists), in part by the use of the Birmingham organ (unfortunately dubbed in, but at least very effectively done) with its floor rattling “Grand Ophicleide” stop, in part by the use of so-called “Tower drums” (huge instruments that are in some cases tuned an octave lower). I suspect you’ve never heard the pedal point under the first choral entry so clearly; I suspect you’ve never heard “Thanks be to God!” played with such inevitable and overpowering accumulation of orchestral weight, and never heard it conclude with such depth of sound; I suspect you’ve never heard Elijah’s ascent into heaven or the final fugue thrown forth with such solidity. You might expect the weight to drag the music down; but despite the size and disposition of his forces, McCreesh manages to duplicate the energy and rhythmic vitality of the best small-group performances. If you think of Elijah as “Victorian”—in the loose sense of stodgy or sanctimonious—you’ll be disabused.


Not surprisingly, McCreesh offers an interpretation that stresses the dramatic. Tempos are generally mainstream, although he does resist the temptation to slow down in such moments as “He watching over Israel,” which can easily turn saccharine. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s unsubtle, much less that it lacks passages of exquisite beauty—listen to the glow in the second half of “Yet doth the Lord see it not” or the magic of the double quartet in “For He shall give His Angels charge” or the sweetness of “Blessed are the men who fear Him.” Still, you’re liable to remember this most for its unparalleled outbursts of power—for the huge sound of pleading on the first choral entry, for the overwhelming impact of the silences after “Hear and answer!,” for the shocking arrival of the fire from heaven (“Oh thou who makest”), for the sense of vastness of “Go, return upon thy way.”


As for the title role: If you’re looking for tender authority as Elijah cures the widow’s son, Keenlyside is your man; if, on the other hand, you’re looking for sheer venom as Elijah calls for the murder of the prophets of Baal, then Keenlyside is also your man. This is, simply put, a superbly rich characterization, one that captures, in glorious voice, all the expressive swings of the part. For a quick tour, try the handling of the tricky emotional terrain in “It is enough.”


The other soloists are all excellent: I especially appreciated Rosemary Joshua’s fiery purpose in “What have I to do with thee?” The chorus, which combines singers from Wroc?aw and from Britain, has a lot of younger voices: They sing with freshness, enthusiasm, and no sign of inexperience. The eight who have been picked out for the double quartet—and who are also called forth, in various combinations, for “Cast thy burden,” “Lift thine eyes,” and “Holy, holy, holy”—blend exquisitely. The orchestra is magnificent, too, and balances between soloists, orchestra, and chorus are consistently well judged.


Although I wish (as I did with their Berlioz Requiem) that we had been given a surround-sound version of this performance, the stereo engineering is first class. When you go to your shelf for a recording to demonstrate your new subwoofer, you’re not usually apt to pass by Mahler to reach for Mendelssohn; but this is surely an ideal release for that purpose. As with the Berlioz, it comes in a hard-cover book (fortunately, CD-sized, so it fits on your shelves) with detailed notes, full text, and plenty of photographs. One textual point: Mendelssohn revised the work significantly for the second performance, and McCreesh gives us the final version (with a bit of light editing to the words). This is clearly the right choice, and clearly the Elijah of choice. Want List material.


FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 4, "Italian" / A Midsummer Night's

MENDELSSOHN: SCOTTISH & ITALIA

The child Mendelssohn developed extraordinarily rapidly after progressing, apparently late in 1819, from imitative student exercises to composing his own music. Over the next two years he tackled increasingly ambitious large-scale works, including a number of string symphonies, a Singspiel, and his first concerto, in A minor for piano, written early in 1822. The Concerto for Violin and Strings in D minor followed later that year, and the Concerto for Violin and Piano, again in D minor, in the spring of 1823; the latter was also initially accompanied by strings only, but Mendelssohn later added parts for wind and timpani, in which version it is heard here. Even between these two concertos one can hear a striking advance in the young composer’s sense of originality and mastery.

The Violin Concerto draws on Classical-era models such as Mozart, but it is also influenced by French innovations in violin writing developed in Mendelssohn’s own time, and fully exploits the evolving techniques of new virtuosos. Among them was Eduard Rietz, Mendelssohn’s teacher, the work’s dedicatee, still a teenager himself and yet leader of the Berlin Court Orchestra. There is much dazzling filigree writing here but also some deeply expressive modulations which convey an emotional maturity far beyond what one could expect from a 13-year-old composer.

Dating from six months later, the Double Concerto is an even more polished work, full of memorable melody, no less brilliant in its solo writing but astonishingly confident in its handling of material indebted to Bach, to Mozart and Beethoven and somehow none the worse for all that
The Ukrainian violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv is now based in the US, where she works as both a soloist and a teacher, including Head of Strings at the University of Connecticut. She is fluently partnered here by Antonio Pompa-Baldi, who has performed and recorded much of the supremely challenging late-Romantic repertoire: a favorite performer at keyboard festivals such as Rarities of Piano Music in Husum, he is also a member of the piano faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

"Awakening" is the title of tenor Robert Pohlers' solo debut release on GENUIN. Together with his pianist Friedrich Praetorius, he brings to life a unique compilation of lieder by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Songs of Nature, Life, and Love, sung mainly from the new edition of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. Why this is only now available is because the beautiful lieder are predominantly of private origin, and many of them were not originally intended for publication at all. With their intimate character, they are sonorous heart-to-heart messages, brought to us by the gentle voice of the former Thomaner Robert Pohlers and the clear piano playing of Friedrich Praetorius.

What poses the greater danger for a young violinist? Recording unusual repertoire that will appeal only to a few (unfamiliar showpieces by obscure composers, avant-garde repertoire, manuscript Baroque works, and on and on) or taking the plunge and recording the 198th and 206th (not actual numbers) versions of war-horses committed to disc in this decade alone that will, again, appeal to only a few? What?s a young man to do? Nicolaj Znaider has chosen to record Beethoven?s Violin Concerto and to couple it with Mendelssohn?s. The two concertos, he contends (in snippets from an interview that Eric Wen included in the booklet) call forth the essential qualities a violinist must possess. At one time, critics?reserving judgment to find out how they later met more substantive challenges?tended to give short shrift to violinists who initially recorded less than significant repertoire. Of course, the bold and the brave would then be mercilessly compared with Heifetz, Szigeti, Oistrakh, Milstein, Francescatti, and others. Znaider has strong partners in Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, who play with abundant nuance in Mendelssohn?s Concerto and with powerful solidity to Beethoven?s. Occasionally, even seemingly ordinary phrases in Mendelssohn?s Concerto benefit from their attention, which consistently sets Znaider in a warmly nurturing context. And the monumental opening tutti (as Mehta and the Orchestra make it) throws a strong spotlight on the soloist in its equally prepossessing entry. The engineers? balance of soloist and orchestra (Znaider?s far enough forward to be clearly prominent yet not unnaturally dominant) provides an ideal. Znaider plays the 1704 ex-Liebig Stradivari, on loan to him, with sleek elegance, producing an even response in all registers. His sound?s never quite lush, but it?s commanding and appropriately subtle. When he?s unaccompanied in Beethoven?s first movement, his flexible tone production doesn?t require an underlying blanket to convey harmonic meaning. If he doesn?t sound sprightly in Mendelssohn?s Concerto, he never forces the piece into the Procrustean bed of late-Romantic expressivity, either. His playing?s never supercharged, like Maxim Vengerov?s (which, of course, risks mannerism), and it just as seldom flows so naturally as did Anne-Sophie Mutter?s early interpretations. But his technique shows itself to advantage in Kreisler?s first-movement cadenza, which he strops to a keen technical edge but also graces with penetrating musical insight. Has he solved the problem he explicitly set himself in Beethoven?s Concerto?making the omnipresent scales and arpeggios assigned to the violinist serve structural ends? In collaboration with Mehta and the orchestra, he?s made a good stab at it. These readings seem undergirded by a strong partnership and, in themselves, display all the virtues. What could be missing? My grandmother told my father about how easily recognizable Kreisler?s manner had been. Vengerov and Mutter, though not so individual as Heifetz or Oistrakh, can still be picked out after careful listening. Some violinists seek to solve musical problems, believing that in their solution they will find the Holy Grail. Breughel?s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus portrays the small figure of Icarus falling in a vast landscape, with all the countryside simply going about its own business. Of course, Icarus hadn?t solved his technical problems; but if he had, and had continued to soar, would the folk be portrayed watching him? Heifetz could bolt everybody to attention with a few notes, and I?m not sure that he did so by dint of having solved intellectual problems. What will my son tell his children about Nicolaj Znaider?


For anyone seeking this particular partnership of great violin concertos (and it?s not the most common coupling?the last Schwann Opus lists only several examples, some of these in sets) Znaider?s offers such a wealth of musical and violinistic virtues, that nobody could withhold a recommendation. But still, some unfulfilled desire to discern a personality, a human face with recognizable features, prompts me to issue that recommendation with less enthusiasm than the musical merits of the performances might otherwise deserve.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Anne Akiko Meyers is a thoughtful rather than a flamboyant virtuoso, and the four items here suit her exceptionally well. There is no feeling that the shorter pieces are in any way mere fillers, so rapt is her playing.

The sweet, gentle opening of the Mendelssohn Concerto, as presented by Anne Akiko Meyers, immediately sets the pattern not only for that central work, but for the whole, unusual collection on this disc. As her previous discs for RCA have demonstrated, this violinist, born in California in 1970, is a thoughtful rather than a flamboyant virtuoso, and the four items here suit her exceptionally well. There is no feeling that the shorter pieces are in any way mere fillers, so rapt is her playing, with the opening of the Vaughan Williams bringing a pianissimo of breathtaking intensity, as instantly established by the Philharmonia strings under Andrew Litton.

Particularly after reviewing Itzhak Perlman's live version of the Mendelssohn, recorded in Chicago, I have inevitably been struck that this is a small-scale reading, but in context that hardly matters. From the limited range of dynamic here as well as the total absence of forcing—even when in the finale she plays with quicksilver velocity at a tempo no slower than Perlman's—one's impression tends to be confirmed that Meyers's tone is not large, but she compensates in sweetness and poetry. My only reservation is that in her legato playing the microphone tends to pick up and exaggerate the occasional unwanted portamento. Her flowing speed for the Andante completely avoids sentimentality, however sweetly lyrical the result.

In a way I am sorry that the Vaughan Williams is not placed first on the disc, for there the raptness of Meyers's playing is even more striking, and Andrew Litton—who from the start of his career has shown what great sympathy he has for British music—makes the most understanding accompanist. The atmospheric intensity of the performance is enhanced by the vividly full-bodied recording, built on a very solid bass, and the refinement of sound, with the violin set naturally rather than spotlit, is equally impressive in the Dvorak, which emerges as far more than just a salon piece with a Slavonic flavour. The Massenet too, which can seem all too sweet, is played with a natural gravity, with Meyers avoiding the temptation to exaggerate her warm G-string tone. Though there are many other versions of the Mendelssohn with obviously higher priorities, this one, offering an unusual sequence of other items, all played with compelling dedication and poetry, and recorded in vivid sound, clearly has its place.'

Edward Greenfield, Gramophone (2/1994)

A Gramophone Editor's Choice

The Doric String Quartet is firmly established as one of the leading quartets of its generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics around the globe. Following their acclaimed recordings of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, here they are joined by leading violist Timothy Ridout for this album of his two string quintets. Mendelssohn's two String Quintets were written at the beginning and end of his short but remarkable compositional life. No 1 was written in 1826, shortly before the Overture to 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', when Mendelssohn was just seventeen. No.2 was written in 1845, when he was thirty-six, a year before the premier of Elijah and just two years before his death.

REVIEWS:

This recording shows these quintets are one of [Mendelssohn’s] finest achievements, full of lyricism and power…with almost Beethovenian profundity. The energy of the players' account of Op. 87 is pretty irresistible.

-- The Guardian (UK)

Minutely attentive to Mendelssohn’s detailed dynamic and phrase markings, they yield to none in polish and precision. True to form, they characterize with gusto.

-- Gramophone (Editor's Choice, 4/2022)

“Mendelssohn is a challenge, because his music appears to be so deceptively easy,” says the pianist Claire Huangci, speaking about her new album. Together with violinist Marc Bouchkov she has recorded works by Mendelssohn for violin and piano: the two Violin Sonatas in F – one major, one minor – and the Double Concerto in D minor. They are accompanied in the latter work by the successful conductor Howard Griffiths and the Basel Chamber Orchestra. As Ms Huangci points out, this represents a program rich in contrasts highlighting Mendelssohn’s artistry and the versatility of such a combination of works: “A mix requiring wit and brilliance on the one hand, while also requiring the performers to go beneath the surface and reveal a deeper meaning including sorrow, compassion and nobility, and that is something that is not easy to detect at first glance. The young Felix Mendelssohn has such a feel for the dramatic.”

REVIEW:

This is the first recording I’ve heard by Marc Bouchkov, a violinist born in Montpellier in 1991. He won 1st Prize at the Queen Elizabeth Competition at Brussels and 2nd Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He is an excellent violinist with a fiery temperament and a highly polished technique. Claire Huangci studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Eleanor Sokoloff and Gary Graffman and with Arie Vardi in Hanover. She is a perfect match for Bouchkov, and the two make this music exciting.

-- American Record Guide

Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously ‘fresh’, ‘vivid’, ‘transparent’ and ‘invigorating’. Of Mendelssohn the team has previously recorded the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a release described as ‘capturing Mendelssohn’s inimitable spirit’ on the website Crescendo. The same disc included The Hebrides, and now the SCO and Dausgaard return to Scotland, with Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony. This was begun in 1829, after a stay in London during which the composer conducted his Symphony No. 1, also included on this disc. Mendelssohn’s imagination was often fired by impressions from nature, and Scotland was the Romantic landscape par excellence, celebrated for its rugged Highland scenery and melancholy tunes. ‘I think that today I found the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony’, he wrote to his parents after a visit to the ruined chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It took more than a decade for him to complete the symphony – but ever since its first performance, in 1842, it has been a staple of the symphonic repertoire.

REVIEW:

With the 38-member Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conductor Thomas Dausgaard here offers an ensemble probably quite similar in size to that which played Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56. The size fits Dausgaard well, for his readings are crisp and restrained, without a lot of vibrato (as is his trademark with this group) or big emotional climaxes. Dausgaard's quick, high-tension approach works well here. BIS contributes fine engineering from the Örebro Concert House in this fresh Mendelssohn release.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Peter Donohoe CBE is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. On this first volume of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, he writes: ‘When I first became conscious of my desire to be a musician, Mendelssohn meant more to me, personally, than almost any other composer – he certainly ranked alongside Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. My choice of program for the present recording is based around a large selection from the Lieder ohne Worte, which I preface with the Rondo capriccioso, Op. 14 and the three wonderful Fantaisies ou Caprices. The Rondo capriccioso and Trois Fantaisies ou Caprices are exquisite examples of the extraordinary facility of Mendelssohn (implicitly as a pianist, but also as a composer), of his originality and inspiration, at an age that allows us, in my view, to place him in the same group of wonderfully natural and prodigious composers as Haydn and Mozart. It is always a pleasure to play these works, and they go to the heart of why I became a musician in the first place.