Mendelssohn: Complete Piano Music

Howard Shelley is an acknowledged expert in the area of early Romantic piano music. With this disc, Shelley presents the first installment of a six-volume set of Mendelssohn's complete solo piano music - perhaps the least well-known part of the composer's repertoire. Mendelssohn composed or began nearly two hundred works for piano. However, only about seventy were published during his lifetime.

In 2017 Decca published the 10-CD Box "Mendelssohn Complete Piano Works”. The recordings (2005-2014) include 59 World Premieres.

A significant composer of the Mendelssohn line is Arnold Mendelssohn (1855–1933), great-nephew of Felix. He was born in the Silesian town of Ratibor (now Racibórz, Poland) on December 26, 1855. Arnold Mendelssohn's piano works are modest in number and all of them are recorded here. The compilation begins with the 'pen-and-ink drawings' published in 1901 by Dreililien (Berlin) as Five Characteristic Pieces for Piano Solo, Op. 20. Nonetheless, these works are characteristic of Mendelssohn's sustained study and exploration of Classical sonata form, which the composer regarded as the be-all and end-all of instrumental music. (Excerpts from the booklet by Jens Markowsky.) Pianist Elzbieta Sternlicht began her studies at the State Music Academy in Warsaw. After several years of artistic activity in Paris, Sternlicht moved to Berlin in 1977, where she is a freelance musician and a lecturer at the Universität der Künste.

Mendelssohn's complete works for cello and piano fit on a single CD with room to spare, and your collection should have room to spare for the terrific performances contained on this disc. Cellist Elizabeth Dolin and pianist Bernadene Blaha emphasize the composer's classicism and elegance, in contrast to the somewhat wilder spin with which cellist Mark Shuman and pianist Todd Crow suffuse these works. But whereas the latter ASV release is resonant to a fault, Analekta's engineering conveys a more intimate and equally warm ambience that falls kindly on the ears. Dolin and Blaha are never less than equal partners, which is important considering that Mendelssohn treats both instruments as such. (Classics Today 10/10)

Howard Shelley continues to overturn the conventional wisdom about Mendelssohn’s unjustly neglected piano music, again demonstrating convincingly its claims on our attention.