Mendelssohn: Piano Trios Nos. 1 And 2

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FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)Piano Trio No.1 in D minor, Op.49[1] Molto allegro agitato[2] Andante con moto tranquillo[3] Scherzo: Leggiero e vivace[4] Finale: Allegro assai appassionatoPiano Trio No.2 in C minor, Op.66[5] Allegro energico e fuoco[6] Andante espressivo[7] Scherzo: Molto allegro quasi presto[8] Finale: Allegro appassionatoFelix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 – 1847)Piano TriosBorn in Hamburg in 1809, eldest son of the banker Abraham Mendelssohn and grandson of the great Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, who took the additional name Bartholdy on his baptism as a Christian, Heine’s ticket of admission to European culture, was brought up in Berlin, where his family settled in 1812. Here he enjoyed the wide cultural opportunities that his family offered, through their own interests and connections.Mendelssohn’s early gifts, manifested in a number of directions, included marked musical precocity, both as a player and as a performer, at a remarkably early age. These exceptional abilities received every encouragement from his family and their friends, although Abraham Mendelssohn entertained early doubts about the desirability of his son taking the profession of musician. These reservations were in part put to rest by the advice of Cherubini in Paris and by the increasing signs of the boy’s musical abilities and interests.Mendelssohn’s early manhood brought the opportunity to travel, as far south as Naples and as far north as The Hebrides, with Italy and Scotland both providing the inspiration for later symphonies. His career involved him in the Lower Rhine Festival in Düsseldorf and a period as city director of music, followed, in 1835, by appointment as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. Here he was able to continue the work he had started in Berlin six years earlier, when he had conducted in Berlin a revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Leipzig was to provide a degree of satisfaction that he could not find in Berlin, where he returned at the invitation of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1841. In Leipzig once more, in 1843, he established a new Conservatory, spending his final years there, until his death at the age of 38 on 4th November 1847, six months after the death of his gifted and beloved sister Fanny.The year 1839 was mainly spent in Leipzig. Here Mendelssohn, with initial reluctance, wrote an overture and a song for Victor Hugo’s play Ruy Blas, a work he described as quite horrible and incredibly beneath the dignity of any writer, presumably finding its lurid intrigue and subversion of the normal social order distasteful. The same year brought a setting of Psalm CXIV, When Israel came out of Egypt, for eight-part chorus and orchestra, and conducting engagements in Düsseldorf and Brunswick. The Psalm found a place in the concert repertoire of the autumn Leipzig season, when Schubert’s Symphony in C major, retrieved from oblivion by Schumann and first