Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

Description

It is difficult to mention Mendelssohn without thinking of the formidable power that his music can exert on the imagination, conjuring both the sun of Italy, the grayness of the mists of Scotland, and a whole world of creatures, elves, fairies, witches, or wizards. A child prodigy, an extraordinary composer, he sometimes remains in the shadow of the rest of the 1810 generation, to the detriment of his art - in many respects, fascinating. With Les Ambassadeurs ~ La Grande Écurie, Alexis Kossenko undertakes to replay and record Mendelssohn's orchestral works, seeking not only instrumentation, forces, period arrangements, but also focusing on the less frequently honored versions on record or in concert. Indeed, Mendelssohn was a great dissatisfied, and he often left several states of the same score. The first volume of this series focuses on symphonies No. 4 "Italian" (1834 version) and No. 5 "Reformation"... the second chronologically, and the first of his great symphonies, composed by a 20-year-old Mendelssohn!