Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto in A minor

Three years before the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, Felix Mendelssohn wrote this amazing Concerto for (forte)piano and violin, built on the Classical model but brimming with new, even iconoclastic ideas. And yet, when it had its first performance in May 1823, the composer was aged just 14! By then he had already written around 100 works, including a Piano Concerto premiered a year earlier. It was not until the late 20th century that they appeared in a critical edition, on which this recording is based.

Kristian Bezuidenhout first gained international recognition at the age of 21, after winning the prestigious first prize as well as the audience prize in the Bruges Fortepiano Competition. He has fully explored early keyboards, studying harpsichord with Arthur Haas, fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson and continuo playing and performance practice with Paul O’Dette. Bezuidenhout is a frequent guest artist with the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, The Orchestra of the 18th Century, Les Arts Florissants, Concerto Köln and The Chamber Orchestra of Europe, in many instances assuming the role of guest director.

Bezuidenhout now divides his time between concerto, recital and chamber-music engagements, appearing in the early-music festivals of Barcelona, Boston, Bruges, Innsbruck, St. Petersburg, Venice and Utrecht, as well as the Saintes Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, the Chopin Festival Warsaw, the Tanglewood Festival and Mostly Mozart Lincoln Center, and at many of the world’s most important concert halls including those of Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, London, Vienna, Tokyo, Paris, Boston and New York.

He is a guest professor at the Schola Cantorum (Basel) and the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, Ney York); in 2007 he was awarded the Erwin Bodky Prize and the Deutschlandfunk Förderpreis. Kristian Bezuidenhout is Artistic Advisor for the Constellation Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mendelssohn wrote his first concertos between 1821 and '23 while still only a boy, fresh from his meeting with Goethe in Weimar.There was a double concerto for violin, piano and orchestra, plus one solo concerto each for the two instruments (they are all without opus number and not to be confused with the later piano concertos or the Violin Concerto Op. 64). Mendelssohn's teacher Zelter set up the meeting with Goethe, but his pupil soon surpassed him by far. Dinorah Varsi plays his rapid runs, chains of trills and parallel octaves with all the necessary virtuosity. Alexander Sitkovetsky, on the other hand, moves effortlessly between the 'galant' and the French styles, and in the double concerto he and Dinorah Varsi together offer a virtuoso display, pulling out all the stops. (Sitkovetsky was discovered at just 8 years of age by Yehudi Menuhin, under whose baton he later played Mendelssohn, it being Menuhin, incidentally, who rediscovered Mendelssohn's early violin concerto and brought it to the public's attention). A must for everyone interested in Mendelssohn's early works.

On this Phaedra production Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort pays homage to Mendelssohn, whose 200th birthday is celebrated in 2009. The A minor piano concerto was written by a thirteen year old Mendelssohn for his private orchestra!