Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 And 2 / Capriccio Brillant / Rondo Brillant

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Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 - 1847)Piano Concerto No.1 in G Minor, Op. 25 Piano Concerto No.2 in D Minor, Op. 40 Capriccio Brillant in B Minor, Op. 22 Rondo Brillant in E Flat Major, Op. 29Felix Mendelssohn, grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, the greatJewish thinker of the Enlightenment, was born in Hamburg in 1809, the son of a prosperousbanker. His family was influential in cultural circles, and he and his sister wereeducated in an environment that encouraged both musical and general cultural interests. Atthe same time the extensive acquaintance of the Mendelssohns among artists and men ofletters brought an unusual breadth of mind, a stimulus to natural curiosity.Much of Mendelssohn's childhood was passed in Berlin, where hisparents moved when he was three, to escape Napoleonic invasion. There he took lessons fromGoethe's much admired Zelter, who introduced him to the old poet in Weimar. The choice ofa career in music was eventually decided on the advice of Cherubini, consulted by AbrahamMendelssohn in Paris, where he was director of the Conservatoire. There followed a periodof further education, a Grand Tour of Europe that took him south to Italy and north toScotland. His professional career began in earnest with his appointment as generaldirector of music in D??sseldorf in 1833. Mendelssohn's subsequent career was intense and brief. Hesettled in Leipzig as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts, and was instrumental inestablishing the Conservatory there. Briefly lured to Berlin by the King of Prussia and bythe importunity of his family, he spent an unsatisfactory year or so as director of themusic section of the Academy of Arts, providing music for a revival of classical dramaunder royal encouragement. This appointment he was glad to relinquish in 1844, laterreturning to his old position in Leipzig, where he died in 1847.As a boy Mendelssohn had tried his hand at the composition ofconcertos for one or two pianos, and had also written a concerto for piano and violin. Inmaturity he was to write two piano concertos, the first of which, in G minor, was composedhurriedly, as he made his way back from Italy, and written down three days before thefirst performance, on 17th October 1832 in Munich, with the composer as soloist.The G Minor Concerto is unusual in a number of ways. Inparticular Mendelssohn dispenses with the customary orchestral exposition, as he was to doin the later Violin Concerto, allowing the orchestra a mere seven bars of introduction,before the brilliant intervention of the soloist. The stormy first theme leads to a secondsubject that is gentler in character, experimenting in the use of less usual keys. Thecentral development section of the movement is followed by the briefest ofrecapitulations, ending in a fanfare, before the pianist leads the way into the E majorslow movement, which might almost be an orchestrated Songwithout Words. The trumpets and French horns herald the start of the lastmovement, with its reminiscences of the