Review: Warner's Mendelssohn (Almost) "Great Edition"
Vložit
- čas přidán 15. 03. 2024
- This 40 CD set contains mostly excellent performances of the vast majority of Mendelssohn's music. There are so many wonderful and surprising works that will be unfamiliar to more casual listeners, and on that basis this set is highly recommendable. More serious collectors will have to decide if this is worth acquiring based on what they might already have.
- Hudba
Mendelssohn gives Schubert a run for his money as the "fifth Beatle" (along with Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) and for me, along with Mozart, the only major composer I am never not in the mood for. Thanks, Dave, for championing him.
Thanks for going through all this. I'll confess that Mendelssohn is a composer I all but ignored until I started watching your videos. In your video on the Scottish Symphony, you said something like, "If you don't really know this work, you'll wonder where it's been your whole life." Well, you were exactly right! I've explored more since then, & he's extraordinary! So, thanks so much for opening my eyes to this disregarded genius.
I wonder if you might be interested in going through the big Ozawa boxes, especially the Warner box, & the complete Sony/RCA box.
See Ozawa reviews on Classicstoday.com.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thanks. I asked about those two in particular because they haven't been reviewed on the website.
Can’t wait to get this! Mendelssohn is one of my favorite composers!
Dave, you’re going to bankrupt me! Just kidding!! Thanks for your work! 😄
Can you review the Warner Messiaen Box?
I love these composer box sets - give me the opportunity to learn so much more about the composer. I just finished a Brahms box set (superb) and went through the Brilliant Classics, Mendelssohn box set sometime ago. What a great composer he was!
Undoubtedly Mendelssohn was a great composer. I think what may put people off is that his music is, by and large comfortable on the ears. It lacks "gnarlyness" and darkness. Even Schumann, his great contemporary delves into this soundworld more readily. ....
If I had it to do all over again and didn't have so many preferable options, I'd probably get this set.
My absolute favorite now for the MSND Incidental Music I discovered in the Kubelik DG box. Not every scrap and melodram are included, unlike the Previn and a couple of others, but Kubelik's tempi, balances,color, and phrasing are as if he'd consulted Mendelssohn himself.
Toscanini performed the Adagio e lento with string orchestra and RCA should have issued it. But it's on CZcams.
I can't understand either why Warner didn't choose the Fruhbeck Elijah. And I'm a member in good standing of the EFC. (Elijah Fan Club.)
I remember seeing Masur do the Scottish Symphony with the Gewandhaus Leipzig at the Proms back in the late 80s or maybe 1990. I also got to see Frühbeck often in Madrid, as guest conductor for the Spanish National Orchestra. He's the one conductor who was able to instill some life into Brahm's Second Symphony, a work I find boring when anyone else conducts it. I'll have to revisit Frühbeck's Paulus and Elias, which I bought many years ago. As far as the Mendelssohn symphonies go, I got a set by Peter Maag back in 2000. A very fine purchase that was.
I saw Frübeck do a spectacular Brahms 3rd with the National Symphony in Washington in the early 80s. The second half was Carmina Burana, equally spectacular.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I checked my CDs this morning and listened to Paulus. The set I have is by Helmuth Rilling. I saw Frühbeck conducting Elias back in the 90s or maybe late 80s, that's why I was confused. He was a somewhat electrifying conductor, capable of conveying so much in the concert hall. Sort of like Zubin Mehta.
It looks like they used Mendelssohn's own paintings for some of the album sleeves, but there's also a lot of Caspar David Friedrich and the usual German romantic painters. Wonder how many of Mendelssohn's artworks survive and if they would have been enough to do the box. His watercolors were lovely (and appear on several BIS covers of his chamber music).
Which box is better - this one or the one on Hansler? Thanks.
I love the Hanssler set; it has more cds, more music and the symphony recordings from Heidelberg are among the best I've ever heard. The Warner packaging is certainly nicer; the Hanssler disks are just in cheap white envelopes with that annoying gummy tab.
It looks like someone beat you to this question by three hours. He responded to that saying he prefers Hänssler
How do you think this stacks up when compared with the boxes on Brilliant Classics and Hänssler? I have both of them but have not yet cracked them open to listen to them.
On balance, I like Hanssler the best, but they all have their merits.
Curious what you think of the new Jarvi/Zurich Mendelssohn cycle when you've had a chance to take it in.
I look forward to hearing it.
Absolutely agree that Mendelssohn is far too underrated. In fact Dave has sold me on the First Symphony. I had a Naxos recording of it. Although it's good, it was CPO's version that got me hooked. I would even go as far as to say, the CPO should be a reference recording. Plus you get Schneider's Symphony #17 and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in D Minor.
I've been in that concert hall. The floor creaks! Thanks for buying the WD40 -- Mendelssohn's house could use some of that.
Are the Greek tragedy overtures and choruses not in this box or did I just miss you mentioning them?
WD-40 won't keep your chair lubricated. Use a more viscous lubricant like a synthetic grease. Work it deep into the mechanism and you'll never have to lubricate again.
Thanks for the tip.
Luckily , Frederic Lodeon is still with us but unfortunately Daria Hovora has left us.
One of the best solo recitals i have ever heard live was at the Domain Forget music camp, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, in the summer of 1985, with Lodeon and indefatigueable "collaborative pianist" Dale Bartlett [lamentably also deceased] in a program of 4 sonatas: Vivaldi (cannot remember exactly which one), J.S.Bach (one of the gamba sonatas arranged for 'cello+piano), Beethoven #3 in A+ (opus 69), and after intermission, Shostakovich opus 40...
WD 40 is great
I know you’ve talked about this before, the issue of “underrating”. At various times I’ve heard that all of these early romantic composers are “underrated “ - certainly Berlioz, certainly Schumann (where the mental health issues as a critical criterion are now frankly tiresome and even offensive for the most part) and even Chopin because he wrote mostly piano pieces (limited talent kind of underrating). Dvorak for nationalist reasons, Tchaikovsky for gay hysteria reasons and for being a master melodist (!) Mahler for so many reasons, even Bruckner when I was young was still seen as “underrated” because of the various oddities.
How much does this have to do with the cult of Wagner in particular as it developed in the late 19th century? My hunch is that it has a lot to do with that, and seeing a lot of things from that perspective. Of course it didn’t help Mendelssohn (who gets recorded a lot these days actually) that he was of Jewish origin.