Mendelssohn: Song without Words, Op. 19b No. 3 in A major 'Hunting Song' (Jägerlied)

Howard Shelley is acclaimed as the living master of early Romantic piano music. So much of this music was ignored throughout the twentieth century that there is still a sense of discovery at each new recording. Shelley here presents the first instalment of a six-volume set of Mendelssohn’s complete solo piano music—perhaps the least well-known part of the composer’s repertoire.

Mendelssohn composed or began nearly two hundred works for piano. Nevertheless, he saw only about seventy through the press, released in seventeen opera from the Capriccio Op 5 (1825) to the sixth volume of the Lieder ohne Worte Op 67 (1845). Some twenty-five additional pieces appeared posthumously in eleven additional opera. The remainder, whether fully drafted or fragmentary, were left to his musical estate or have disappeared.

Volume 1 includes Opp 5, 6, and 7, the first three piano compositions Mendelssohn published between 1825 and 1827, as well as Op 19b, the first volume of his Lieder ohne Worte, released in 1832.

Ronald Brautigam here performs the first four books of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte).

If claims could be made for a composer to have invented a genre single-handedly, Mendelssohn would be a strong candidate with his ‘Songs Without Words’ - short lyrical pieces for the piano using a song-like structure. They were immediately popular across Europe, and were imitated by several composers, including Robert Schumann.

One of today’s leading fortepiano players, Ronald Brautigam has released complete sets of piano music by Mozart and Haydn, and is currently recording a highly regarded series of the solo piano works by Beethoven.

Jorge Bolet was an avowed Romantic, happy to relax once the serious business of his recital is over. Like Moiseiwitsch, he could be mischievously enterprising, challenging his audience to guess the composer of this or that rare poetic jewel or confection - or, like Rubinstein, he could affectionately confirm and recreate their favourites.

With delightful old world charm, fleet of finger, yet ever conscious of the singing line, Bolet weaves pure magic in this collection of encores. After a long absence from the catalogue, this disc returns, now at budget price.

The debut album from South Korean pianist Jingsang Lee features little heard music - the Piano Sonata No 1 and Three Caprices - by Ferdinand Hiller (1811- 1885) alongside popular repertoire by Mendelssohn and Chopin. What makes this double CD especially unusual and attractive is that it pairs a studio recording of the programme performed on a modern Steinway grand piano with a live recital recording of all the same pieces played on three period Steinway pianos dating broadly from the years when the composers were active.

Jinsang Lee first performed this recital under the title ‘Music Making Among Friends’, an imaginary soirée involving three Romantic composers who had become very good friends.

The recording makes no pretence at historical authenticity - there’s no record of what the three young men may have played at their meetings in Paris and in Germany, and Hiller’s First Sonata was published in 1852, after the deaths of both Chopin and Mendelssohn - but it ponders on each composer performing their own music for each other’s enjoyment.

Born in 1981 in Seoul, Jingsang Lee was the first prize winner of the Hong Kong International Piano Competition in 2008, a triennial event organized by the Chopin Society of Hong Kong. Lee found Hiller’s music in the library of the Hochschule für Musik Köln where he was studying - the composer founded that august institution in 1850. Hiller’s compositions may be rarely performed nowadays but they are robust, musical and a delight to listen to.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is regarded as the inventor of the ‘Songs without Words’ genre. He wrote eight volumes, each containing six Songs without Words. Michael Korstick performs these genial atmospheric pieces, which are all too often only heard only as encores, with a dazzling interpretive guise.

From the mid 1970’s until his death, Cuban born Jorge Bolet emerged as one of the world’s truly great pianists and one of the last representatives, along with the likes of Cherkassky, Horowitz and Earl Wild, of the great Romantic tradition of pianism. His pedigree was marvellous - a student of Godowsky-disciple David Saperton at the Curtis Institute, there he was also able to play for Godowsky himself and Josef Hofmann. He won the Naumburg competition in 1937 and looked set for a great career, but the war interrupted the flow of things and he struggled through the 1950s & 60s, mainly playing in the USA and not quite making the international ‘big-time’. His big break came with an RCA contract and the release on LP of a stunning live Carnegie Hall concert in 1974. Shortly after, he was signed to Decca and went on to make many award winning discs. But what of the early years? There’s not much, but here, for the first time on CD, we have the four LPs he made in the 1950s. His very first disc was of Latin-American repertoire that he was never to record again. Here also is the first ever recording of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto in a performance that is still up there with the best.

These almost unknown discs are sure to fascinate, and fill an important gap in the mystery of Bolet’s early career.

Mendelssohn’s well known Songs Without Words have been arranged for mixed choir and organ. Stergmann has set sacred texts and the melodies and accompaniment are sometimes simple but at other times are in four or six part choral settings or use polyphony. Rich colour and striking music is combined with profound texts which invite reflection as well as listening.