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Introduction: Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany on 3rd February, 1809 into a distinguished and afflluent family of bankers, intellectuals and artists. A child prodigy, he produced his first composition in 1820; a constant stream of work continued throughout his relatively short life - he died in Leipzig on 4th November, 1847 at the age of just 38. These notes, which accompany Pristine Audio's Mendelssohn Edition, released to mark the 160th anniversary of his oratio Elijah, our first award-winning release for Divine Art, follow Mendelssohn's life through eight compositions newly remastered for August 2006.
Following the effective resignation of his Berlin post, Mendelssohn was happy to return in 1845 to Leipzig, where the King of Saxony had requested he resume his former post. Despite growing ill health the warmth of his reception in the town must have done much to lift his spirits - the season got off to an excellent start with a first concert at which Clara Schumann played and Mendelssohn was greeting back with spontaneous enthusiasm. Of his two Piano Trios, as previously observed in these notes, this second has perhaps the edge over the first, with stronger material in the outer movements, a lively scherzo to match the earlier piece, though perhaps not quite the same heights of lyrical perfection achieved in the slow movement. In this recording we are grateful to Parlophone enthusiast and long-time friend of Pristine Audio, Mr Keith Claxton, for unearthing a forgotten gem from this distinguished trio of German academics, which we understand to have been recorded in 1930 and issued two years later in the UK on the discs from which our transcription was taken. Once the listener adjusts to the slightly "underwater" ambiance of the piano this is surely a performance worth hearing again.
Elijah By the the time Mendelssohn had written his second Piano Trio, work was already well underway for the mammoth task that was Elijah, which was to be one of his final compositions. The commission had come from Birmingham, in the English Midlands, together with a request for Mendelssohn to conduct at the 1846 Birmingham Festival. However, with increasingly poor health, by December of 1845 word was sent to the effect that, although he would attend the festival, he could only undertake to conduct his own works there. Increasingly exhausted by conducting duties, Mendelssohn finally completed Elijah in July 1846, and travelled first to London on 17th August before journeying on to Birmingham, where the work received its rapturous first performance on 26th August. "It was quite evident at the first rehearsal in London that they liked it, and liked to sing and play it; but I own that I was far from anticipating that it would acquire such fresh vigour and impetus as the performance" - Mendelssohn, in a letter to his brother, Paul The success of the work continued in London, where following its first performance there the Prince Consort sent the composer a book of the words he had used, inscribed thus: To the noble artist who, though encompassed by the Baal-worship of false art, by his genius and study has succeeded, like another Elijah, in faithfully preserving the worship of true art; once more habituating the ear, amid the giddy whirl of empty frivolous soun, to the pure tones of sympathetic feeling and legitimate harmony; to the great master who, by the tranquil current of his thoughts, reveals to us the gentle whisperings, as well as the mighty strife of the elements, to him is this written in grateful rememberance by - ALBERT Mendelssohn eventually left England on 6th October 1846, arriving back in Leipzig exhausted. Just over a year later he was dead, the only other work of any significance being a string quartet written at Interlaken in the summer of 1847.
[We have two recordings of Elijah available - a superb 1954 Decca recording conducted by Josef Krips, and the earlier, 1930 Columbia recording, released in 2005 through Divine Art Historic Sound:]
Some eighty-four years later Elijah received its first (almost) complete recording, in 1930, by an illustrious cast of the finest performers in England at the time. A further 75 years were to pass before this recording was dusted off, restored and remastered by Pristine Audio for Divine Art. It won the prestigious Choral CD of the Year award in Classic Record Collector magazine. In the magazine's original review, David Patmore commented: What especially distinguishes this first reissue in any longplaying format is the astoundingly good quality of the transfers by Andrew Rose of Pristine Sound [sic]. He has successfully managed to do away with the aural “murk” which characterises so many recordings from this period, to reveal a clear and relatively well balanced aural picture. The notes are informative. If Divine Art’s new Historic Sound label is able to maintain these first rate standards of production and repertoire, its future publications will be well worth acquiring, as is certainly the case with this excellent release.
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