Mendelssohn: Complete Chamber Music for Strings 3

They have been very well recorded, with plenty of immediacy, which captures the visceral and at times robust quality of their playing...The Mandelring capture well the bustling energy of the... — Gramophone Magazine, January 2014 More…

Release Date: 25th Nov 2013
Catalogue No: AUDITE92658
Label: Audite
Series: Mendelssohn Complete Chamber Music for Strings
Length: 73 minutes

Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 44 No. 3

Work length33:21

$8.00

$10.35

Mandelring Quartet

I. Allegro vivace

Track length12:06

$3.00

$3.85

II. Scherzo. Assai leggiero vivace

Track length4:09

$1.00

$1.30

III. Adagio non troppo

Track length8:20

$2.00

$2.60

IV. Molto allegro con fuoco

Track length8:46

$2.00

$2.60

Mendelssohn: Andante (Tema con Variazioni) in E major, Op. 81 No. 1

Work length5:05

$1.00

$1.30

Mandelring Quartet

Mendelssohn: Scherzo In A Minor Op. 81 No. 2

Work length3:28

$1.00

$1.30

Mandelring Quartet

Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat major, Op. 20

Work length32:00

$7.00

$9.05

Mandelring Quartet, Quartetto di Cremona

I. Allegro moderato ma con fuoco

Track length14:13

$3.00

$3.85

II. Andante

Track length7:09

$2.00

$2.60

III. Scherzo. Allegro leggierissimo

Track length4:34

$1.00

$1.30

IV. Presto

Track length6:04

$1.00

$1.30

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About

Felix Mendelssohn did not write his six mature string quartets continually, but instead at particular pivotal points in his life and compositional career. In his youth, studying Bach and Beethoven proved to be fruitful, and later in life he was inspired by the exceptional violinist Ferdinand David to write his three Quartets Op. 44 between 1837 and 1839 (represented on this SACD by the final work in E flat major). They document the mature, formally assured Mendelssohn who sums up his instrumental writing: brilliantly composed (particularly for David’s violin), full of colour and formal attractions, romantic in their conduct.

After completing his Quartet Op. 80 (contained in the second volume of the complete recording), Mendelssohn had not much time left to revisit and renew the string quartet. Two single surviving movements – a tenderly transfigured, but also irascible, Andante with five variations and a whispering Scherzo – were integrated into Op. 81 after Mendelssohn’s death. To Mendelssohn admirers, this Scherzo is faintly reminiscent of the Scherzo in the Octet Op. 20 with which the sixteen-year-old Felix, in a coup de main, created a new genre: “symphonic” chamber music where all “pianos and fortes need to be very precise and clearly separated and more distinctly emphasised than it is normally the case with pieces of this genre.” The jubilant opening of the octet, the romance-like Andante, the elastic, elf-like Scherzo and the rapid fugal finale – every movement is proof of the resourcefulness and the youthful genius of this “lovely episode in German music”, as Friedrich Nietzsche once referred to the composer Mendelssohn.

Reviews

January 2014

They have been very well recorded, with plenty of immediacy, which captures the visceral and at times robust quality of their playing...The Mandelring capture well the bustling energy of the finale of Op. 44 No. 3.

27th October 2013

the Mandelring Quartet have the attributes Mendelssohn demands: great virtuosity, evenness of tone, precision, expressive intensity, and force combined with the light touch needed to capture the composer’s effortless sense of movement

March 2014

Here, in its third volume of the composer’s complete chamber music for strings, the Mandelring Quartet offers an account that impresses by its apparent spontaneity in the outer movements, with fast tempos creating an exciting vibrancy ... [a] well-recorded disc.

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Mendelssohn: Complete Chamber Music for Strings 3

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