Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13

The Quatuor Ebène turns to Mendelssohn: two quartets by Felix and one by his elder sister Fanny, who composed over 400 works and who, like her brother, died in 1847. “Felix’s quartets speak with intimacy, but are not devoid of violent, stormy emotion,” says Raphaël Merlin of the Quatuor Ebène. He praises Fanny for composing “with surprising freedom”, saying “we fell in love with her string quartet”.

In a characteristically imaginative stroke of programming, the Quatuor Ebène presents a total of three quartets by two Mendelssohns – Felix and his older sister, Fanny.

Like Felix, Fanny was a highly gifted child, but, as a woman, her life took a different path from his. Felix remained close to her and solicited and respected her opinions on his music. She, meanwhile, produced a canon of well over 400 pieces – although only one string quartet; by contrast, Felix composed seven works in the genre, one of them a youthful work that carries no opus number. This disc features the A minor quartet he composed in 1827, very much under the influence of Beethoven, and the F minor quartet of 20 years later, a highly emotional piece, expressive of the grief he felt at Fanny’s death, aged 41, in May 1847. As it turned out, the quartet was to be the last major work he composed: he himself died in November of that year, at the age of just 38.

The Strad described the Minetti Quartet’s first release (Haydn HAEN98645) as an “exemplary” recording.

They return with a programme of enchanting quartets by Mendelssohn.

These top musicians have charmed audiences around the world.

As the name of this label would suggest, this CD presents the Beethoven and Mendelssohn A minor String Quartets in 2+2+2 surround sound on SACD with a DVD Video.

Following their successful complete recording of the 15 string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich, the Mandelring Quartett now embark on their next extensive recording series: Mendelssohn Complete Chamber Music for Strings, including the Octet and the two Quintets (together with the Quartetto di Cremona and Gunter Teuffel), presented on four SACDs in total.

The first volume of this new series features a youthful work by Mendelssohn as well as the early master works, Op. 13 and Op. 12.

Even if Felix Mendelssohn composed far fewer string quartets than Haydn, Beethoven or Schubert, they nonetheless embody a musical romanticism that appears in Novalis’ Hymns and Eichendorff’s Novellas: a whispering within nature, at times with dramatic agitation, permeated by deeply felt chants. And even the quartet in E flat major, written by the 14-year-old pupil of Carl Friedrich Zelter, the Berlin composer and consultant to Goethe, implies that Mendelssohn would imaginatively maintain the musical legacy. This legacy had one name, first and foremost: Ludwig van Beethoven. Following his death in 1827, Mendelssohn composed his first mature quartet, Op. 13, which explores Beethoven’s formal ideas but, entirely romantically, places the song “Ist es wahr?” at its centre. This work, as well as its successor, the quartet Op. 12 (the chronology of publication is the reason for the reverse numbering), proves to be formally highly advanced and reveals Mendelssohn as a sophisticated musical narrator – a facet which also attracted criticism from his contemporaries.

This is the start of a new series dedicated to the seven String Quartets of Felix Mendelssohn in gripping interpretations by the Minguet Quartett. His second quartet was composed in 1827, the year of Beethoven’s death, and in it quite clearly drew on the tone and formal structures from the late composer’s String Quartet op. 132 without becoming his epigone. Mendelssohn’s Sixth Quartet, the highly expressive String Quartet in F minor op. 80, tells of his grief at the death of his sister.

Since its foundation in1995, Quartetto di Roma has been recognised as one of the most significant quartets. The ensemble has been invited to play in many prestigious events. In 2010, they celebrated their 15th anniversary with a Recital in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall.

Best known as the supreme genius of an even-tempered Romanticism, Mendelssohn shows a much more passionate side in the works recorded here by the Modigliani Quartet: in reaction to tragic events, including the death of his beloved sister Fanny, the composer turned to Beethoven for inspiration and wrote music that is at once profound, intense and audacious.

Melba Recordings presents some of Australia’s most dynamic players of chamber music in Beloved of the Gods, essaying masterpieces by two divinely inspired master composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn, both of whom died tragically young.

The Dean Emmerson Dean trio, comprising clarinettist Paul Dean, brother violist (and leading Australian composer) Brett Dean and pianist Stephen Emmerson, play Mozart’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano in E flat major, K498 ‘Kegelstatt’. They follow this with Papamina Suite, an arrangement of music from Mozart’s The Magic Flute by Stephen Emmerson. This release follows Paul Dean’s acclaimed recording with Grainger Quartet of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, and the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with The Queensland Orchestra and Guillaume Tourniaire on Sublime Mozart (MR 301122). ‘As near perfection as one could ever expect to hear’ said SA-CD.NET. Paul Dean has been described as ‘the most distinguished clarinettist of his generation’ and an Australian national treasure.

The brilliant young Tinalley String Quartet plays the Mendelssohn String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op.13, ‘Ist es wahr’ which won them the Banff International Chamber Music Competition award in 2007.