Pianist Christian Chamorel (b. 1979) is one of Switzerland’s most widely fêted pianists of his generation. +An invitee to festivals around the world, he is also founder of the annual, popular Swiss Mont Musical festival. +Mr. Chamorel’s new Fondamenta all-Mendelssohn release includes performances of the great composer’s two piano concerti, several of his Songs Without Words, and the Variations Sérieuses. +Laurent Gendre leads the Orchestre de Chambre Fribourgeois.

Classical Music

On Volume 5 of Howard Shelley's complete Mendelssohn piano music series, he continues to overturn the conventional wisdom about the composer's unjustly neglected piano music, again demonstrating convincingly it's claims on our attention.

MENDELSSOHN String Symphonies • Michael Hofstetter, cond; Stuttgart CO • ORFEO C 763093 D (3 CDs: 221:27)


The well-publicized childhood musical genius of Mozart and Schubert was surpassed by that of Mendelssohn, as witnessed by the 13 string symphonies he completed by age 15. The third of these string symphonies already shows mastery, by this mere child, of the art of contrapuntal writing. This and other signs of precocious musical genius increased as the composer matured through each of the succeeding 10 string symphonies. The first six are imitative of Schubert and Beethoven, but in the Seventh String Symphony in D Minor, Mendelssohn begins to express his individuality. From the Ninth on, Mendelssohn moves forward at a galloping pace, with glorious fugal movements and fugal passages proliferating. The 11th String Symphony, in F Major/F Minor, is my favorite. Mendelssohn augments the second movement, marked Commodo (Schweizerlied) , with percussion at its conclusion. The 13th String Symphony is incomplete, consisting of only a single movement that shows further mastery of contrapuntal writing.


Michael Hofstetter, the principal conductor of the renowned Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and follower of a line of succession that started with the orchestra’s founder, Karl Münchinger, gives us a commendable set of these early Mendelssohn masterpieces. But the playing is relatively subdued and the conducting is characterized by too weak a beat for my taste. Other listeners may prefer this approach, which uses a small chamber orchestra, to my favored version by Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with its fuller string complement. In terms of the era, Hofstetter’s approach is Baroque in character—small ensemble with restrained vibrato—whereas Masur’s is contemporary and closer to late 19th century. The latter seems to me to be more in line with what Mendelssohn meant to convey, closer to Beethoven than to Bach, but who really knows? In the first movement of the 11th Symphony, Hofstetter fails to take the very important exposition repeat, whereas Masur wisely observes it. This is the only textual difference that I found.


This disc is a very good Baroque-style alternative to Masur’s exceptionally fine modern performances. On that basis, it is recommended.


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

Classical Music

Robert Schumann called Mendelssohn the Mozart of the 19th century given his mastery of both the keyboard and composition at such an early age. On "Wunderkind Felix" conductor Patrick van der Linden and Ars Musica pay tribute to the precocious work of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy with this album of pieces the young master wrote between the ages of 14 and 19. Ars Musica presents a reorchestration of the 1st Symphony for chamber orchestra which explores the flexible orchestral settings of Mendelssohn's youthful compositions. This is paired with the equally youthful String Symphony No.10 and his Kyrie, which is performed by the Ars Musica Chorus and Orchestra. Soprano Nanette Mans and the Ars Musica Chorus join the orchestra to perform the Cantata 'Wer nur den lieben Gott lasst walten' and his setting of Ave maris stella, both written in 1828 when he was a mere 19 years old.

These ever-popular works by Mendelssohn are performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by its music director (1969-84) Sergiu Comissiona. Originally released on the Vox label in the mid-1970s these recordings have been newly remastered in high definition from the original master tapes.

Romanian-born conductor Sergiu Comissiona galvanised the Baltimore Symphony into an orchestra of national prominence, releasing several albums on Vox. This classic recording of Mendelssohn's 'Scottish' Symphony is coupled with a previously unreleased recording from 1977 of excerpts from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Remastered in high definition from the original tapes.

Selections recorded January 10 and June 16-17, 1990.

BRAHMS Violin Concerto. MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto • Andrés Cárdenes (vn); Ian Hobson, cond; Sinf Varsovia • ARTEK 0039 (67:30)


Andrés Cárdenes, a former student of Joseph Gingold at Indiana University, prize-winner in the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition, and distinguished professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, plays Brahms’s Violin Concerto with undeniable technical and musical command. Passage after double-stopped passage rings out with the clarity and assurance of a string quartet. Rising so authoritatively above the orchestra in the first movement of this massive work—with what seem to be reserves of tonal strength—can’t be so easy as Cárdenes makes it sound. Ian Hobson makes of the Sinfonia Varsovia a tautly rhythmic juggernaut, matching but never overpowering his soloist. Their white heat in the first movement reminds me of Leonid Kogan’s performance with Kiril Kondrashin and the Philharmonia Orchestra, a barnburner among barnburners (Kogan especially prized Brahms’s Concerto and Mozart’s Third). Cárdenes’s lyricism in the second movement proves that, pace Sarasate, the oboe doesn’t have the piece’s only good tune; his tone, as in the first movement, sounds thick as molasses in its lower registers and tensile and strong in the upper ones. He never spoils a line by lingering, never spoils passagework by rushing. Accordingly, the finale is perhaps more massive and deliberate than ethnically colorful or giocoso. But this movement’s performance fits with that of the Concerto’s other two movements. As in the case of Oistrakh, nobody should be tempted to accuse the soloist (as they had Heifetz) of superficial brilliance. The recorded sound represents Brahms’s rugged acoustic landscapes with stirring fidelity and the soloist with breathtaking presence.


Cárdenes and the orchestra seem to have a special affinity for the stormiest passages in Mendelssohn’s first movement, which they lace with heart-pounding adrenaline. For Cárdenes, the recitative-like sections that lead to the cadenza represent a dramatic climax, which he mounts with such affirmative power that even the most authoritative passages in the cadenza might seem anticlimactic. Once again, Hobson and the orchestra provide a sonorous, rhythmically bracing, accompaniment. The slow movement’s darker middle section and the finale’s episodes provide the kind of dramatic moments in which Cárdenes and the orchestra can revel. His may not be elfin Mendelssohn, such as that in which Heifetz or the less driving but nevertheless cracklingly electric Francescatti could dazzle listeners, but its dramatic outbursts offer a complementary, more histrionic, and equally idiomatic view of the Concerto.


Cárdenes’s two committed performances, in recorded sound of elemental strength and definition (befitting the soloist’s large-scale conception and the orchestra’s Gibraltar-like accompaniment), deserve a strong recommendation, even for those who believe their collection of the violin’s central literature needs little augmentation.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Includes work(s) for piano by various composers. Soloist: Lilia Boyadjieva.

International award-winning young piano trio the Fournier Trio make their Resonus Classics debut with a fresh and exciting new recording of the late C minor (Op. 49) and D minor (Op. 66) piano trios by one of the most significant composers of chamber music in the nineteenth century, Felix Mendelssohn. The Fournier Trio bring new life and vitality to these two trios, Mendelssohn’s only output in the genre, that arguably represent the very pinnacle of his select chamber output.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music