Mendelsohnn Bartholdy

An exceptionally fine performance of the Mendelssohn string quintets by Jaime Laredo, Ani Kavafian, Heiichiro Ohyama, Kim Kashkashian and Sharon Robinson can be found on CD45883 (61 minutes: ADD). These are rhythmically alert and spirited readings, played with great charm and eloquence. They are an especially welcome addition to a catalogue that sports no rival version of No. 1 and only one of No. 2. The 1978 recording is one of the best in the batch, exceptionally well balanced with a fine feeling of depth and presence. Strongly recommended. (Gramophone)

Recordings of Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, are abundant, and even the pairing with the rarer Robert Schumann Violin Concerto, WoO 23, of 1853 are not as infrequent as they used to be. The thorny Schumann concerto has undergone a reevaluation upward, and plenty of players now concur with the judgment of Yehudi Menuhin: "This concerto is the historically missing link of the violin literature; it is the bridge between the Beethoven and the Brahms concertos, though leaning more towards Brahms." Violinist Carolin Widmann who (like the ECM label on which the album appears) has focused mostly on contemporary music, takes up the challenge of providing something new here, and she meets it. The central fact of the recording is that Widmann conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe from the violin. Others have done this before, but few have pursued the implications of the technique as far as Widmann has: the performances are unusually light and transparent, and they are perhaps thus in accord with the sounds an orchestra of the middle 19th century might have produced. Sample the unusually lively, sprightly reading of the Mendelssohn concerto's finale.

Mendelssohn's three piano quartets were written in childhood. The second, the Piano Quartet in F minor, Opus 2, was written in 1823, a year after the first, and dedicated to his teacher Zelter. The strings start the first movement, before the piano adds its own more extended comment. It is the piano that introduces the A flat major second subject, based on the descending scale. The piano part gives an appearance of virtuosity, with complications of hand-crossing to impress an audience. The strings, violin, viola and then cello, lead back, as the central development comes to an end, to the recapitulation and final more rapid coda.

The Bartholdy Quintet releases its new album, recorded on our partner label CAvi Music, which includes both of Brahms' string quintets. In an attempt to emulate Schubert and Mozart, Brahms only took on the challenge of composing his second string quintet in his old age. After completing this task, he told his publisher that he had reached the pinnacle of his entire creative output. In fact, the composition turned out to be the prelude to a further surge of strength and creativity. Brahms also initially delayed composing his first string quintet, written eight years earlier, because he felt that his first attempt was better suited as a piano quintet. In the end, however, it turned out to be one of his most cheerful chamber music works. He called it a "product of spring," or, as his biographer put it, "a child of the spicy Ischl corn."

In February 2009, on a date very close to the celebration of Mendelssohn’s 200th birthday, we got together for the first time in a quintet lineup in order to perform a small concert in the form of a public rehearsal. The repertoire was rapidly chosen: it had to include at least one piece by Mendelssohn. After that successful experiment, we spontaneously decided upon the composer’s second surname for our new quintet…

These miniatures are exquisitely shaped, with a directness of delivery and coherence of phrasing that cannot fail to charm.