Description
When Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy returned to the Saxon trade fair city in 1845 after four years of strenuous commuting between London, Frankfurt, Berlin and Leipzig, he found a suitable apartment at Konigstrasse 5 (today the Mendelssohn House). He brought with him his Piano Trio in C minor, the publication of which was to take up a great deal of his time over the next few months. Multiple corrections to the proofs delayed publication, so Ferdinand David (violin) and Carl Wittmann (violoncello) premiered the trio from the manuscript on December 20, 1845 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Mendelssohn himself took on the virtuoso piano part. Even before the piano trio was published in print in February 1846, it was performed several times in the music salon of Mendelssohn's apartment. This is now used as a museum after a detailed reconstruction. In the last decade, the museum has undergone several expansions and now includes, among other things, an exhibition on Mendelssohn's sister Fanny Hensel.
In March 1847, Fanny Hensel confided in her diary: "I am busy with a trio that is causing me a lot of trouble." Just a few weeks later, during Sunday music on April 11, her only piano trio was premiered on the occasion of her sister Rebecka's birthday. Fanny Hensel died on May 14, 1847 at the age of 41. After her death, her brother arranged for certain compositions to be published. The last work to be published was the D minor Trio op. 11.
The museum complex of the Mendelssohn House in Leipzig also includes a garden with a summer house, the upper floor of which has been converted into a chamber music hall. The hall has a historic grand piano (Steinway, around 1910) and excellent acoustics, which is why it is regularly used for music recordings. This CD with the two piano trios by Fanny and Felix was also recorded there. The booklet also gives the reader a glimpse into the museum rooms, which breathe the spirit of the mid-19th century without appearing dusty.
