Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 1 And 5

Description

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847)Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op. 11Symphony No.5 in D major, Op. 107, "Reformation"Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809, son of the banker AbrahamMendelssohn and grandson of the great Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, themodel for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, the epitome of tolerance in a generallyintolerant world. In 1812 the family moved to Berlin after the French occupationof Hamburg and it was there that Mendelssohn received his education, in music asa pupil of Carl Zelter, for whom the boy seemed a second Mozart. As a child hewas charming and precocious, profiting from the wide cultural interests of hisparents and relations, excelling as a pianist and busy with composition aftercomposition. In 1816 he was baptized a Christian, a step that his father tooksix years later, accepting what Heine described as a ticket of admission intoEuropean culture, although it was one not always regarded as valid by prejudicedcontemporaries.Abraham Mendelssohn sought the best advice when it came to his son's choiceof career. Cherubini, director of the Paris Conservatoire, was consulted, and,while complimenting Abraham Mendelssohn on his wealth, agreed that his sonshould become a professional musician, advice given during the course of a visitto Paris in 1825, when Mendelssohn met many of the most distinguished composersand performers of the day. In Berlin his career took shape, with prolificcomposition and activity as a pianist and as a conductor. His education was toinclude a period of travel throughout Europe, a Grand Tour that took him as farnorth as Scotland and as far south as Naples, his journeys serving as sources ofinspiration.In 1835 Mendelssohn was appointed conductor of the Leipzig GewandhausOrchestra. There were, at the same time, other commitments to be fulfilled in ashort career of intense activity .In Leipzig he established a series ofhistorical concerts, continuing the revival of earlier music on which he hadembarked under Zelter with the Berlin performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passionin 1829. At the same time he gave every encouragement to contemporary composers,even to those for whom he felt little sympathy. At the insistence of thePrussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV he accepted an official position in Berlin,but this failed to give him the satisfaction he had found in Leipzig, where heestablished the Conservatory in 1843 and where he spent his final years untilhis death at the age of 38 on 4th November 1847, six months after the death ofhis beloved sister Fanny.Mendelssohn wrote his Symphony No.1 in C minor in March 1824, at theage of fifteen, a year or so before writing his famous Octet. This was not hisfirst attempt at the form, since he had already written a dozen symphoniesscored only for strings. The C minor Symphony, however, at first labelledby its precocious composer as No.13, was the first for full orchestra, scoredfor double woodwind, horns, trumpets and timpani and now strings with anundivided vi