Espresso 5.8

‘Mendelssohn’ explores three facets of one of the most famous names in classical music: the glittering Piano Concerto No.1 by Felix with the London Mozart Players; the long-lost ‘Easter Sonata’ by his sister Fanny as well as transcriptions by other composers of Mendelssohn’s most famous music. In 2024, Isata featured in the critically acclaimed film ‘The Other Mendelssohn’, exploring the life of the exceptionally talented by overlooked Fanny Mendelssohn, later Fanny Hensel. In the film, they uncover the fact that the Easter Sonata, a piece lost for 150 years, was in fact written by Fanny, not Felix. Isata was the first artist to perform the work attributed to the correct composer. The album features this world premiere recording of the new urtext edition of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata. As well as beautiful solo piano transcriptions by Liszt (‘On Wings of Song’) and Rachmaninov (‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’), and two of Felix’s ‘Songs Without Words’ and Fanny’s ‘Nocturne’, also for solo piano.

‘Mendelssohn’ explores three facets of one of the most famous names in classical music: the glittering Piano Concerto No.1 by Felix with the London Mozart Players; the long-lost ‘Easter Sonata’ by his sister Fanny as well as transcriptions by other composers of Mendelssohn’s most famous music. In 2024, Isata featured in the critically acclaimed film ‘The Other Mendelssohn’, exploring the life of the exceptionally talented by overlooked Fanny Mendelssohn, later Fanny Hensel. In the film, they uncover the fact that the Easter Sonata, a piece lost for 150 years, was in fact written by Fanny, not Felix. Isata was the first artist to perform the work attributed to the correct composer. The album features this world premiere recording of the new urtext edition of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata. As well as beautiful solo piano transcriptions by Liszt (‘On Wings of Song’) and Rachmaninov (‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’), and two of Felix’s ‘Songs Without Words’ and Fanny’s ‘Nocturne’, also for solo piano.

This series was created by Luciano Linzi, artistic director of Casa del Jazz of Rome, was produced in collaboration with publishing group "la Repubblica/L'espresso". The series was published for four consecutive years, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. 41 CDs in all, sold over 1.000.000 copies. The recordings are all original live productions.

Great compilation. Featuring a wide variaty of Dire Straits tours and a very good recording of the last concert of The Notting Hillbillies tour from 1990. All songs are taken from soundboard recordings, good to very good sound quality.