Mendelssohn: Song without Words, Op. 67 No. 4 in C major 'Spinning Song' or 'Bee's Wedding' (Spinnerlied)

Martin Stadtfeld performs Mendelssohn, Schumann & Bach, with the renowned Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, under its founder, Sir Neville Marriner. This is the first Mendelssohn (1809-1847) disc from acclaimed, award winning German pianist Stadtfeld, who caused a stir in 2002, becoming the first German to win the 'International Bach Competition' in Leipzig. There are two CD's, with disc one being a x13 piece body of Mendelssohns work & then a bonus disc two containing x4 pieces of work, covering Schumann & Bach.

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.

IRENE SCHARRER, though perhaps the least remembered of the major Matthay pupils, was the earliest to record, beginning in 1909 at the age of 21.That in itself is a credit to her early fame, which she established through an extrovert, but always musical, virtuosity.

She excelled in such works as the Chopin Etudes, nine of which she recorded, and in other brilliant pieces such as those here by Scarlatti and Liszt, but the poise and refinement of her Chopin nocture or the slow movement of the Mozart sonata reveal another side to her playing that is sadly underrepresented on disc. Her final recording, of the Litolff Scherzo, was also her most famous; in its day it was a best seller and was responsible for putting that work on the musical map. This set reissues for the first time all Scharrer’s electrical recordings and also an example of every work she recorded in the acoustic era (pre 1925) that was not later remade as an electrical recording. For completeness, a discography of all her other acoustic recordings is also included.

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.