Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings in D Minor, Marat Bisengaliev (violin), Benjamin Frith (piano), Royal Northern Sinfonia, Andrew Penny (conductor)
I. Allegro - 00:00
II. Adagio - 17:52
III. Allegro molto - 27:10
Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809, Hamburg - November 4, 1847, Leipzig) was a German composer, pianist, musical conductor, and teacher, one of the most-celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. In his music Mendelssohn largely observed Classical models and practices while initiating key aspects of Romanticism-the artistic movement that exalted feeling and the imagination above rigid forms and traditions. 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, the Italian Symphony, the Scottish Symphony, the oratorio St. Paul, the oratorio Elijah, the overture The Hebrides, the mature Violin Concerto and the String Octet. The melody for the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is also his. Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.
Mendelssohn was an extremely precocious musical composer. He wrote numerous compositions during his boyhood, among them 5 operas, 11 symphonies for string orchestra, concertos, sonatas, and fugues. Most of these works were long preserved in manuscript in the Prussian State Library in Berlin but are believed to have been lost in World War II.
Mendelssohn was just thirteen when he wrote the Double Concerto which is of a rare beauty. Several works by different composers influenced Mendelssohn's composition of this piece. It is likely that Mendelssohn drew this unusual pairing of solo piano and violin from Johann Hummel's own Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Orchestra in G major, Op. 17, with whom he had briefly studied in 1821. The young Mendelssohn was also influenced by Carl Maria von Weber and frequently performed his Konzertstück in F minor. Mendelssohn's appreciation for Viotti, Rode, and Kreutzer (master pedagogues developed the French Method of violin technique) is evident in his writing for the solo violin. Techniques used include portato, slurred staccato, and figures that suggest portamento. Mendelssohn's concerto is similar in structure to Weber's Piano Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 32.
From Mendelssohn's own works, the use of just a string section as orchestral accompaniment is reminiscent of his String Symphonies, twelve of which he had written by the end of the year under the influence of C.P.E. Bach's Sinfonias.
Mendelssohn first composed the work to be performed with his best friend, Eduard Rietz, in another private concert. On July 3, 1822, Mendelssohn revised the work's scoring, adding timpani and winds. Astoundingly, the premiere of that version of the work appears to have taken place on the same day.
Like the A-minor piano concerto, The double Concerto remained unpublished in Mendelssohn's lifetime. It wasn't until 1999 that a critical modern edition was available.
Mendelssohn remains even today a figure to be rediscovered.