Mendelssohn: Concerto for Violin and Sting Orchestra (CD, Br-Klassik)

Adolescent Mendelssohn from the Münchner Rundfunkorchester It was thanks to his father’s predilection for organizing musical concerts in the family’s Berlin apartment on Sunday mornings that eleven-year-old Felix Mendelssohn set about composing a more extensive series of symphonies for strings and that these were also performed for the first time learned. The music and composition lessons spurred him immensely; his diligence and youthful creativity developed early and made amazing progress. In 1821 he created the first half of the string symphonies that he composed within just under two years. During the performances in the context of the house concerts, he himself took over the direction of the chamber orchestra, which was composed of amateurs and professional musicians from the Berlin court orchestra. The form and scoring of the first six of his twelve symphonies follow the model of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Hamburg symphonies: they are in three movements and are for string instruments alone. Style copies are at most rudimentary; mostly Mendelssohn experimented quite freely with the chosen models. Around the same time, around 1821/22, the 13-year-old composed a first concerto for violin and string orchestra for his violin teacher Eduard Rietz, which he was likely to have played during the Sunday music in Mendelssohn’s house. It is based on the concerts of Johann Sebastian Bach, but sounds clearly like Mendelssohn. Since the long-lost manuscripts were rediscovered, Mendelssohn’s youthful works have become an integral part of the repertoire of string and chamber orchestras. The new album by BR Klassik brings together Mendelssohn’s early violin concerto and the first six of his symphonies for strings as studio recordings by the Munich Radio Orchestra under the direction of its first concertmaster Henry Raudales, a repeatedly awarded violinist who has made numerous recordings as a conductor and soloist with the orchestra.