MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY FELIX

(3-CD SET) INCIDENTAL MUSIC FOR ANTIGONE, OEDIPUS, ATHALIA
Felix Mendelssohn is associated with one brilliant score of incidental music for the theatre - A Midsummer Night's Dream - but in fact he composed scores for no less than 15 stage works. The most significant of them, including the three works in this set, date from the period when he was employed by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who was strongly attracted to the spirit of Romanticism and the culture of Greek antiquity. Mendelssohn was drawn to Sophocles's tragedy Antigone by its strong dramatic sense and its universal themes, parti...
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(2CD) A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - OVERTURES
This special collection brings together Felix Mendelssohn's concert overtures, a genre for which the composer was particularly famed. Among them is Ruy Blas; despite Mendelssohn's initial lack of interest in his commission for this work, he later divulged that 'the whole thing gave me more pleasure than much else I have undertaken', and today the work is heralded by many as a dramatic masterpiece. Also featured is The Hebrides - inspired by the composer's first visit to Britain in 1829 - and the C major Overture, also known as the 'Trumpet...
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(2CD) COMPLETE PIANO TRIOS
The father of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn eagerly facilitated their artistic upbringing. Felix's musical career took off from a young age and he was dubbed by Robert Schumann as 'the Mozart of the 19th century', while his similarly talented older sister was expected to keep music only as a hobby. This did not stop her from composing many pieces for playing in the home, some of which were later published under Felix's name. She is considered the most important female composer of the era. This collection brings together the Piano Trios of t...
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(CD) PIANO TRIOS
In 1832 Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) wrote to his sister Fanny that is what about time he wrote some 'good trios'. He had already started but left unfinished a trio for piano, violin and viola, and started the D minor trio shortly after, completing it in 1839. Mendelssohn's friend the composer-pianist Ferdinand Hiller advised him after the completion to make several revisions to make the work sound as up to date as possible -- Hiller, was a pupil of Hummel was a keen supporter of Berlioz and Liszt. The result is a work of perfect proportion...
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(CD) COMPLETE WORKS FOR CELLO AND PIANO
This CD features for the first time on CD the celebrated cello built by Antonio Stradivari, the "Staufer- ex Cristiani" instrument, of enormous power and sonority. Born into a family where music-making lay at the heart of domestic life, Felix Mendelssohn was from an early age exposed to a broad range of composers and styles. First introduced to the cello by his brother, Paul, the young prodigy went on to write a number of charming works for the instrument together with piano accompaniment; this engaging CD details all such compositions, w...
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(CD) COMPLETE PSALM CANTATAS
Mendelssohn, born at the very beginning of the 19th century, was a composer who stood at a number of junctures. Firstly, he straddled the sphere of the Classical masters and the new Romantic pathway being forged especially by Beethoven. Secondly, in his personal life, as a Jew who had converted to Protestantism, he struggled to be accepted fully into his new religion, despite his close adherence to its principles. Thirdly, and most relevantly to this collection, he was privy to an ongoing debate concerning the place and function of church ...
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(CD) VIOLIN CONCERTO IN E MINOR, OPUS 64 - "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM" INCIDENTAL MUSIC

(CD) SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN A MINOR, OPUS 56 "SCOTTISH" - SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN A, OPUS 90 "ITALIAN"
1. Introduktion: Andante con moto - Allegro un poco agitato 2. Vivace non troppo 3. Adagio 4. Allegro vivacissimo - Allegro maestoso assai 1. Allegro vivace 2. Andante con moto 3. Con moto moderato 4. Saltarello: Presto...
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(CD) A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
'With baroque music as "flavour of the age", it seems only natural that we should rediscover - indeed reappraise - all that is neat, winsome and uncluttered in Mendelssohn's music, its slender forms and high level of invention. (...) Herreweghe's lively offering is best recommended to those whose main priority is a sense of period orchestral texture' [Gramophone ] '...one of the lightest performances of the work that I have ever heard.' [Fanfare] This title was released for the first time in 1994....
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(4-CD SET) ELIAS - PAULUS
In 1829 Mendelssohn organised the first performance of J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion since the composer's death. The work, together with Handel's Messiah, was to have an important influence on Mendelssohn's own oratorios, and seven years later he completed the first of them, PAULUS. Narrating several incidents from the life of St Paul, the oratorio firmly established the composer's European reputation, and it is clear that many of the recitatives, not to mention the chorales, are stylistically indebted to Bach. Fast-forward ten years to 1...
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(6-CD SET) COMPLETE STRING QUARTETS, QUINTETS, SEXTET, OCTET
Probably no composer other than Mozart displayed such a prodigious talent in childhood as that displayed by the young Mendelssohn. His early flowering genius made him something of a phenomenon, and this saw his stature in adulthood rise to equal (rightly so) that of the greats - Bach, Beethoven and of course Mozart. This was followed by the inevitable decline in reputation - his comfortable upper middle class upbringing in a Berlin banking family, that included philosopher Moses Mendelssohn hardly fitted the late 19th century image of the ...
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(10-CD Set) FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY: PORTRAIT
CD1 1-3. Konzert fur Violine und Orchester d-Moll (o. op.) / Violin Concerto in D minor (without op.) Yehudi Menuhin, violin and conductor - RCA Victor String Orchestra / recorded in: 1952 4-6. Konzert fur Violine und Orchester e-Moll op. 64 / Violin Concerto in E minor op. 64 Jascha Heifetz, violin - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Sir Thomas Beecham, Dirigent / conductor / recorded in: 1949 CD2 1-3. Konzert fur Klavier und Orchester Nr. 1 g-Moll op. 25 / Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor op. 25 Rudolf Serkin, piano Philadelphia Orchestra -...
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(7-CD SET) COMPLETE SYMPHONIES
Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy of an altogether different order; true, the child Mozart wrote an astonishing amount of fluent, superbly constructed music at a very early age, but his compositional skills developed as he matured, and none of his early works rate among his greatest. By contrast, Mendelssohn would produce many of his first masterpieces at the age of 16. Prior to that, he displayed a precociousness that still amazes to this day. The 13 early String Symphonies, the first six of which were written when the composer was j...
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