Raphael Chirbes

Mendelssohn was without doubt the most precociously gifted composer the world has ever known: not even Mozart produced ‘mature’ masterpieces while still in his teens. He was also a double prodigy on the violin and piano, an exceptional athlete, a talented poet (Goethe was a childhood friend and confidant), multi-linguist, watercolorist and philosopher. He excelled at virtually anything which could hold his attention for long enough, although it was music above all which activated his creative imagination. The two String Quintets were composed at opposite ends of his short career. No 1 was written in 1826, soon after the completion of the Octet and E major Piano Sonata and before the Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, when Mendelssohn was still only seventeen. He later substituted a slow movement in memory of his friend the violinist Eduard Rietz, and it was this revised version of the Quintet that was published in Bonn the same year and is recorded here. Quintet No 2 dates from 1845 (when Mendelssohn was still only thirty-six), a year before his triumphant success with Elijah in Birmingham and just two years prior to his premature death.

2008 release from the amazing Raphael. His voice blended with the music is a wonderful combination that will make anyone appreciate him. You don't need to speak French to tune into the emotion on this album. Raphael is a true artist.

There are two aspects underlying this recording by Raphaël Feuillâtre, First Prize winner at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America Competition in 2018: original works for the guitar and transcriptions. Among the former is Villa-Lobos’s Prélude no.5, part of one of the most evocative and Romantic guitar cycles of the 20th century, the Chopinesque brilliance of the inventive Valse by Barrios Mangoré, and the compendium of virtuosity that is Llobet’s Variations on a Theme of Sor. The transcriptions range from Rameau, through Rachmaninov’s pianistic showcase, the Prélude in G minor, op.23 no.5, to the superbly evocative Alfonsina y el mar by Ariel Ramírez.