Felix Mendelssohn (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn’s compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which includes his “Wedding March”), the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the mature Violin Concerto, the String Octet, and the melody used in the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.
Mendelssohn came from a wealthy Hamburg family who mixed with many of Germany’s leading artists and musicians. An unbelievably clever child prodigy, the young Felix excelled not only as a musician but also as a painter, poet, athlete and linguist. When he was six, Felix began taking piano lessons from his mother. After the family moved to Berlin, Felix and his three siblings studied piano. He made his public debut at the age of nine. Between the ages of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn wrote 12 string symphonies influenced by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. His first published work, a piano quartet, was written by the time he was 13. At 15 he composed his first symphony. The following year, Mendelssohn completed his String Octet in E-flat major, the first work that demonstrated his true genius.
Mendelssohn travelled widely and made the first of his ten visits to Britain in 1829. Afterwards he headed off to Italy. The buoyant and optimistic mood with which his Italian Symphony begins bears all the hallmarks of a happy man, eager to make his mark on the work and express his travels through music. He was a great lover of Britain, and the people of Britain loved him and his music back in equal measure. He travelled widely around the country, with trips to Scotland sparking two of his best-loved works: his Scottish Symphony and the Hebrides Overture. As well as composing, Mendelssohn was a highly proficient conductor, being given the plum job of music director at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835, when he was just 26. Mendelssohn was also a brilliant keyboard player. One of his obituarists noted: ‘First and chiefest we esteem his pianoforte-playing, with its amazing elasticity of touch, rapidity, and power; next his scientific and vigorous organ playing.’
Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah was given its premiere in Birmingham in 1846 to an ecstatic audience of 2,000 people. It had taken him some ten years to prepare, including penning most of the libretto himself. It was very much the ‘Messiah’ of its day: hugely popular, cementing Mendelssohn’s position as one of the greatest composers of sacred music. Elijah is depicting events in the life of the Prophet Elijah as told in the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings of the Old Testament. The piece was composed in the spirit of Mendelssohn’s Baroque predecessors Bach and Handel, whose music he greatly admired. After its successful premier at Birmingham Town Hall in its English version, conducted by the composer, it was immediately acclaimed a classic of the genre. As The Times critic wrote: ‘Never was there a more complete triumph – never a more thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art’. Notwithstanding the work’s triumph, Mendelssohn revised his oratorio wholesale before another group of performances in London in April 1847 – one (23 April) in the presence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The German version was first performed on the composer’s birthday, 3 February 1848, in Leipzig, a few months after Mendelssohn’s death, under the baton of the Danish composer Niels Gade.
Soloists: to be announced.
ALWAYS REMEMBER – MUSIC IS BEST IN LIVE PERFORMANCE – AND THIS WORK CERTAINLY IS – but click on the link to hear Elijah
Mendelssohn: Elijah, Op. 70 – McGill Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Richard Cock.