A New Defense of Mendelssohn

[karlhenning]

Now I'm back home, I can revisit some Mendelssohn sacred choral music . . . .

[Gurn Blanston]

A Roberto Prosseda recorded them for Decca.  I thought that Chiu might have for Harmonia Mundi, but I can't find any listing for it.

No, unfortunately Chiu didn't appear to record them. I do have his disk of the sonatas mentioned though, and it is commendable. One wouldn't have suspected that Op 106 actually WAS an early work.



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Listening to:
Friedrich Gulda - Op 109 Sonata in E 1st mvmt - Andante, molto cantabile ed espressivo

[op.110]

Mendelssohn's music is simple and melodically beautiful, and it's hard to criticize him for his music other than its lack of complexity. I love listening to his music. But Mendelssohn's talent is top of the bottom shelf.

[Gurn Blanston]

Mendelssohn's music is simple and melodically beautiful, and it's hard to criticize him for his music other than its lack of complexity. I love listening to his music. But Mendelssohn's talent is top of the bottom shelf.

Whew! Finally, I know where to put it. I foolishly had it sharing the upper shelf with some stuff I like a lot. My bad   



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Listening to:
Friedrich Gulda - Op 111 Sonata in c 2nd mvmt - Arietta: Adagio molto semplice e cantabile

[greg]

Haven't listened to much Mendelssohn, but the Fingal's Cave Overture is something that really caught my attention. Heck, I could've mistaken it for early Wagner that I've never heard before. Any recommendations for me given this preference?

[DavidW]

Haven't listened to much Mendelssohn, but the Fingal's Cave Overture is something that really caught my attention. Heck, I could've mistaken it for early Wagner that I've never heard before. Any recommendations for me given this preference?

Greg!!!  First you have the audacity to spend years on gmg and never listen to Mendelssohn, but then you compare him to Wagner!!!!  You will be punished for your insolence!

[greg]

I've listened to a little. Random youtube stuff and radio stuff- but I doubt I own any CDs. I've listened to the Violin Concerto a few times, and now that I turn on the Italian symphony, the main theme sounds familiar. Not much more than that.

[Gurn Blanston]

Haven't listened to much Mendelssohn, but the Fingal's Cave Overture is something that really caught my attention. Heck, I could've mistaken it for early Wagner that I've never heard before. Any recommendations for me given this preference?

Greg,
If you liked the Hebrides Overture, then I strongly recommend the Scottish Symphony (#3 in a). Check out this link to see a discussion of many recordings of it.

BTW, Mendelssohn and Wagner... nah! 



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Listening to:
Tafelmusik \ Weil - Idomeneo, Rè di Creta, K.366

[greg]

Greg,
If you liked the Hebrides Overture, then I strongly recommend the Scottish Symphony (#3 in a). Check out this link to see a discussion of many recordings of it.

BTW, Mendelssohn and Wagner... nah! 



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Listening to:
Tafelmusik \ Weil - Idomeneo, Rè di Creta, K.366

Thanks, I'll check that out. 
I'll start off with youtube for now, though.

Hm, I thought a lot of it sounded like it could've fit right into The Flying Dutchman, at least at first.

[Gurn Blanston]

Thanks, I'll check that out. 
I'll start off with youtube for now, though.

Hm, I thought a lot of it sounded like it could've fit right into The Flying Dutchman, at least at first.

Well, Wagner did draw his inspiration from a variety of sources. And there is no question that he would have been more than familiar with Mendelssohn's music (Felix was a STAR back then, no matter what he is thought of now). But I don't know what he thought of it, even if he didn't like it, he might have liked a theme or two.



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Listening to:
Tafelmusik \ Weil - Overture to Don Giovanni, K.527

[greg]

I'm listening to the 3rd now, and hearing a long chromatic part at the end of the first movement that sounds like a Wagner signature moment or something. So that makes sense- I suppose it's just a matter of hearing little similarities, nothing more than that.

[Philoctetes]

On my local classical station today they played some of his recent 'unpublished' works, including his correct version of the Italian. I have to say after listening to that. I have seriously reconsidered him.

[Josquin des Prez]

Mendelssohn's music is simple

Not all the time. He may be lacking in technical daring but some of his works are definitely not skim in technical profusion. He's not Brahms, but he sure gets close sometimes. Take his opus 44 for instance.

[Brian]

Such gaiety as I find in Mendelssohn's music, is entirely genuine.

I just got back from a live performance of Mendelssohn's Octet, maybe my all-time favorite chamber work, with Cho-Liang Lin in the first violin spot. Amazing!  It was standing-room only, and I had to stand, but it was electrifying. What a joyous work - the pure joy I felt was matched only by the desperate sadness of the fact that most of us will never, ever in our lives achieve something as purely glorious, as beautifully triumphant, as the work this guy wrote when he was only 16 years old. 

In fact, one could argue that Mendelssohn himself never again attained the heights of his Octet; I also got to hear both of his quintets, and the finales of each seemed to be efforts to "recapture the magic" of the Octet, but without the success.

[The new erato]

He may be lacking in technical daring but some of his works are definitely not skim in technical profusion. He's not Brahms, but he sure gets close sometimes. Take his opus 44 for instance.

I think that is a fair assessment.

[eyeresist]

Hm, I thought a lot of it sounded like it could've fit right into The Flying Dutchman, at least at first.

I read somewhere that Wagner acknowledged the influence of the Hebrides overture on his Flying Dutchman. Apparently at a concert including the overture he joked, "What a thief I was in my youth!"

Mendelssohn was more respected in the 19th century, it seems to me. I detect traces of him in Dvorak, Elgar and even in Brahms. Also, the other day I was listening to Magnard's 3rd symphony (cond. Ansermet), and it seemed to me his most overt influences were Schumann and ... Mendelssohn. (Magnard's period was Late Romantic, but from what I've heard I would describe him as a French Brahms.)

[jlaurson]

Thank you. Very early works, then. Were they recorded, I wonder?

The complete piano works have been recorded by Benjamin Frith for Naxos and by Dana Protopopescu (love that name) for Haenssler. Neither include ALL the rarities Roberto Prosseda offers on his two discs, but they (unlike Martin Jones, on Nimbus) do include most works without opus numbers that FMB wrote.

Happy Birthday, Mendelssohn!
Little Essay on the Composer for his Birthday. (And recording recommendations, too, of course.)

Felix Mendelssohn B.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born today, 200 years ago, in Hamburg, to Abraham Mendelssohn and Lea Salomon, grandson to Moses Mendelssohn, the famous philosopher, scholar, and model for Lessing's "Nathan the Wise". Felix' father, who converted to Lutheranism for convenience' sake ("If you don't believe in any one Religion as the right one, why burden your children with Judaism"), and added "Bartholdy" to the family name.

....

[karlhenning]

He's not Brahms, and why need he be?

[Gabriel]

One day late, but anyway... Happy 200th birthday, Mendelssohn!

For me, some of his music is among the most extraordinary produced in the 19th century. Even if it will sound "cliché", the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream is an incredible achievement for such a young person and one of my favorite works in all classical repertoire. His chamber music is often not just correct, but astonishing (I think of the A minor, D major and F minor string quartets, the string octet or the piano trios). The overture to Paulus has never ceased to move me deeply. His 3rd symphony is admirably crafted, and what is left from his oratorio Christus is so magnificent that I cannot but feel, simultaneously, a deep gratitude for having those fragments and a deep sorrow for not having more of it.

I think that the problem with Mendelssohn was to be too fond of "good taste" while composing (and probably while living), a concept that has been always dismissed when thinking of the period when he was active. While I appreciate and admire works written under the concept of evident, straight and sometimes excessive "romanticism", I do not forget that a different approach is not just possible, but also needed; in Mendelssohn's works you can feel tension, suffering and drama, but with a delicacy that is not always easy to grasp and with a remarkable sense of form and balance. I will probably never consider Mendelssohn the greatest composer ever, but he is for me one of the truly great ones.

[The new erato]

He's not Brahms, and why need he be?

Because any composer being Brahms, would belong in the top ten!