Mendelssohn Discoveries: Rare Piano Works
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Composer: Felix MendelssohnPerformer: Roberto Prosseda
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 2006-05-01
Music Label: Decca Import
Soundtracks:
- Adagio - Allegro
- Adagio
- Allegro - Presto
- Adagio and Presto agitato in B flat minor
- Albumblatt "21.Mai" in A major
- Lied in A major
- Kleines Lied in A major
- Andante in D major
- Scherzo
- Notturno
- Wedding March
Free Music Notes for Mendelssohn Discoveries: Rare Piano Works
Free Music Review: Much Too Long Awaited but All the More Welcome Recorded Piano Solo Works of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Hit: 4 Stars
Being surprised that nobody to date yet has contributed comments on Amazon's Canadian and British WWW sites about this disc of previously unrecorded piano works by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, this listener makes a few comments to supplement those of one (so far) other contributor to Amazon's U.S. site, without being elaborate about doing so, also to encourage those who love Mendelssohn's always lovely music to obtain this disc. For those who wish to have sympathetic commentary on this important CD release, apart from the notes in the booklet that comes with the CD, there is a review-essay of it and another disc of Mendelssohn's piano music as Prosseda recorded that one, too, titled "Roberto Prosseda: Rediscovering Mendelssohn", by Colin Clarke, often quoting Prosseda, who obviously is a most determined champion of Mendelssohn's music, in "Fanfare", vol. 30, no. 3 (Jan./Feb. 2007), p. 56-58. These works all too often have been omitted in putatively "complete" editions of the composer's piano music, which is why it has taken so long for them to appear on a recording, even LP or CD sets setting out to embrace all of Mendelssohn's solo piano music.
The works, for the most part, are not quite top-drawer Mendelssohn, but this composer's standard was high, indeed, so musch so that all of his music is worth hearing, these pieces or any others. The only work that was disappointing in its inconsistency is the lengthy Fantasia in the keys of C minor and D major of 1823, but, after all, Mendelssohn was only fourteen years old when he composed this tripartite piece! The piano writing in the lyric portions sounds more like weak Chopin (whose music of this sort, very little of which was at all tepid, dates, of course, from somewhat later years) than it sounds like Mendelssohn at his more typical and best; there is what sounds like an heavy influence, in these plaintively melodious sections, from "bel canto" Italian opera, but, unlike Chopin a bit later integrating Vincenzo Bellini's kind of elegiac lyricism in his own Polish-French style, the texture and pianistic elaboration of Mendelssohn's handling of such Italianate thematic material is too plain to convey the effect that equally fine melodic writing would have had at Chopin's hand later, but when the young Mendelssohn romps and gambols in parts of the Fantasy at faster tempi, the results are utterlyly delightful. The other works included on this disc of rarities are briefer and more surely "Mendelssohnian" in style and treatment, therefore endearingly beautiful. The shorter the pieces, it seems, the more times it pays re-hearing such perfect gems.
Roberto Prosseda obviously put a lot of work into this disc and his playing does justice to the music, with all the technic and limpidly appealing tone for which one could wish. However, at times Prosseda does seem to hold back, to rein in the music at times when a more freewheelingly and grandly vivid range of expression better would realise the sheer potential to excite the listener. One yearns to hear the equally sensitive but, at "big" moments, more "no holds barred" approach of a young lion of the keyboard like Yevgeny Sudbin launching into this music's more grandiose moments without such unwanted restraint as Prosseda's. However, this is a minor quibble and only applies to this music intermittently. Prosseda is a fine artist, and one is grateful that a pianist of his calibre and devotion to the cause of Mendelssohn's music turned to this unjustly neglected music to undertake his project of recording it.
Mendelssohn Discoveries: Rare Piano Works Poster
The new Decca CD, Mendelssohn Discoveries, contains piano works by Felix Mendelssohn previously unrecorded. Most of these piano works were composed by Mendelssohn during blissful moments in his life - his honeymoon, during times of great financial security; for his sister Fanny's pregnancy and impending birth. No wonder that most newlyweds march down the aisle to Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' from A Midsummer's Night Dream. One only has to take a deeper look at the composer to understand there was tension and suffering in his work as well. Roberto Prosseda, the Italian pianist featured on Mendelssohn Discoveries, sensed Mendelssohn's darker side. ''I think he suffered a lot behind this apparently quiet life,'' says Prosseda in a recent Wall Street Journal article. ''But he never wanted to show off suffering the way Chopin and Beethoven did, he always tried to keep a certain composure. So when the suffering comes out, it comes out even more dramatically.'' An example of this is the newly-discovered Fantasia in C Minor. Composed at the mere age of 13, Mendelssohn seems to express the intensity and complexity of a much older composer. Decca. 2005.Classical Music CDs
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