Mendelssohn: Elias

Mendelssohn's Elijah is a work that definitely stands among the ranks of phenomenal oratorios. This is a tremendous performance where the chorus and conductor seem to have achieved an ideal rapport with the Israel Philharmonic. This recording presents a wonderfully fresh, dramatic exposition of an old favorite that makes it sound new-minted. It's lithe, lean and classically mean. It propels itself along at quite a lick - sometimes considerably faster than Mendelssohn's often surprisingly slow metronome marks. Pauses between movements are kept to a bare minimum, so that the momentum is not lost…Masur's generally speedy traversal is however not an unmixed blessing.

"Never was there a more complete triumph - never a more thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art." This was the response of the critic in the London Times to the wildly successful premiere of Felix Mendelssohn's Elias in 1846. Hans-Christoph Rademann began his tenure as Principal Conductor of the RIAS Chamber Choir with this groundbreaking oratorio. After eight productive and successful years, his final concert in July 2015 also featured the work.

To determine the worth of this 40-disc set called Mendelssohn: The Masterworks, let's assign values to each disc on a scale of one to ten and then add up the total. To start with, there are 10 discs of Mendelssohn's complete choral works with Nicol Matt leading the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Since these performances are uniformly well sung and directed and possess an uncommon amount of enthusiasm for the recherché repertoire, let's give them eight points each for a total of 80 points.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born in Hamburg in 1809 and died in Leipzig at the age of 38. He was very early musically gifted. Mendelssohn performed in public at the age of 9 and composed already from the age of 11. As a pupil of Friedrich Zelter, who was a friend of Goethe, Mendelssohn composed at the age of 17 his first masterpiece: the Overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream. This is included in the extensive CD box as well as a large number of other known or less known pieces by him. The String Quartet in F Minor Op. 80 - written in memory of his beloved sister Fanny - which was recorded in this collection by the Aurora String Quartet is undoubtedly one of his most beautiful works. The Gächinger Kantorei with Helmuth Rilling, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart, the Bartholdy Piano Quartet, the Heidelberger Sinfoniker with Thomas Fey, Ana-Marija Markovina and other renowned interpreters and orchestras can also be heard.

The MDR Leipzig Radio Choir and its artistic director Philipp Ahmann present a collection of Felix Mendelssohn’s choral music, which arguably represents the pinnacle of German nineteenth-century religious music. Ranging across psalm settings, motets, Latin verses, the Deutsche Liturgie as well as the ethereal chorus Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen, which was later adapted and incorporated into his oratorio Elijah, the album highlights the unique stylistic range and expressive power of Mendelssohn’s choral output.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s oratorio Elias Op. 70 was premiered in 1846 at the Birmingham Festival. It depicts the life of the prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 and 2 Kings of the Old Testament. While it was composed in the spirit of Mendelssohn’s Baroque predecessors Bach and Handel, its lyricism and use of orchestral and choral color clearly reflects Mendelssohn’s own genius as an early Romantic composer. Paulus Op. 36, written a decade earlier, was a popular work during Mendelssohn’s lifetime, but failed to maintain its stature in comparison to his other oratorios and the oratorios of Handel and Bach.