HIP Mendelssohn symphonies - recommendations?

[Karafan]

Afternoon all,

I wondered if you had recommendations for Mendelssohn symphonies in historically-informed performances please (particularly 3 & 4)?

Thanks

Karafan

[Basil]

Not sure if these are HIP or not, but I think they are superb.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mendelssohn-5-Symphonies-7-Overtures/dp/B00005ONMP/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1298986721&sr=1-1

[MickyD]

Afternoon all,

I wondered if you had recommendations for Mendelssohn symphonies in historically-informed performances please (particularly 3 & 4)?

Thanks

Karafan

Hello Karafan,

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a complete cycle of the Mendelssohn symphonies from the HIP brigade. The Hanover Band have done 3 and 4 - you have to put up with the cavernous Nimbus acoustic, but I quite like that. When their version on No.4 first came out, it was mixed with the Violin Concerto and the Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring Christopher Kite on a lovely sounding period piano. The other disc with No. 3 gave you Fingal's Cave and Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage overtures. I think these performances can now be found in a big Nimbus bargain box of Mendelssohn.

Norrington also did 3 and 4, I believe, but don't know if they are still in the catalogue. I also have a single Channel Classics disc of Nos 4 and 5 recorded by Anima Aeterna under Jos Van Immerseel - these sound more polished, in my opinion.

The twelve string symphonies were all recorded both by The Hanover Band and Concerto Koln - I have the latter version and find it quite exciting.

[vinteuil]

I can certainly recommend the 3 and 4 with Norrington and the London Classical Players on virgin veritas. And the 3 CD set of the 'string symphonies' with Roy Goodman and the Hanover Band on RCA red seal.

[mathias broucek]

Harnoncourt is pretty good as long as historically "informed" is enough (i.e. not actual old instruments).

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Regarding Nos.3 and 4 on period instruments, I strongly recommend Frans Brüggen on Decca:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sinfonien-3-4-Ouvertüren-Audior/dp/B0029WUB5Q/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1299006322&sr=8-4

As far as 'historically informed, but on (mostly) modern instruments, Thomas Fey and the Heidelberg Symphony are very, very good indeed! Lively speeds - exhilarating at times...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mendelssohn-Felix-Symphonies-Symphony-Scottish/dp/B003ADKJBE/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk?ie=UTF8&qid=1299006511&sr=1-4

[Barbirollians]

The OAE/Mackerras - Italian - is a lovely recording.

[makropulos]

The OAE/Mackerras - Italian - is a lovely recording.

Yes - it's wonderful - and so are the MSND pieces that come as the coupling. Much my favourite disc of orchestral Mendelssohn on period instruments.

[Barbirollians]

More than delighted to find a copy of the now deleted Mackerras Italian in a second hand shop for £2 today my old cassette having suffered drop outs last time I played it .

Still an extraordinarily fresh performance .

[richardfinegold]

Afternoon all,

I wondered if you had recommendations for Mendelssohn symphonies in historically-informed performances please (particularly 3 & 4)?


Thanks

Karafan

Out of curiosity, Karafan, why an HIP recommendation? FM is generally credited with founding the first Modern Professional Orchestra. I think the HIP movement has less to offer when they get to FM, Schumann, and later Romantics.

[jayne lee wilson]

On the MDG label, Musikkollegium Winterthur (founded in 1629, back to the future, something old something new etc...) have been putting together a Mendelssohn cycle under various conductors; I bought the coupling of 1&5 with Thomas Zehetmair after RC's review (G. 4/14) and found it radically fresh and exciting with "speeds close to the playable limit" as the notes say, and with this label you get wonderfully unrestricted sonics...

Mendelssohn needs a new approach and he certainly gets it here! But I've never yet been able to ascertain the provenance of the Kollegium's instruments...

I bought the Fey/Heidelbergers "Hymn of Praise" and can add my enthusiasm for that too...
Norrington's LCP 3rd was one of the top recommendations in Richard Wigmore's Gramophone Collection piece in 12/09. (Trumped by COE/Harnoncourt).

I'd expect great & wonderful things from Norrington's SWR Mendelssohn tapings; I might get around to them when I've finished glorying in his Schubert... (Both LCP & SWR selections are gorgeous...bought both part-cycles after the BaL on the 8th & I do like to take my time...)**

I have to avoid the Mendelssohn 3rd though; another one for the next life, I'm afraid... I bought the Classic Records' Gold CD of Peter Maag's LSO one some years ago and...round and round and round it went...
I can still enjoy looking at it occasionally...

(**BTW, why has Norrington never recorded Schubert 1 & 2? Anyone come across him doing them live?)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

FM is generally credited with founding the first Modern Professional Orchestra.

But his Musicians didn't play Modern instruments, nor have some Modern playing techniques, nor were as large as some of the Modern Professional Orchestras which have recorded this repertoire.

I think the HIP movement has less to offer when they get to FM, Schumann, and later Romantics.

"Less" than ... ?
Which HIPP performances/recordings of this repertoire have led you to this opinion, rfg?

[LeMartinPecheur]

But his Musicians didn't play Modern instruments, nor have some Modern playing techniques, nor were as large as some of the Modern Professional Orchestras which have recorded this repertoire.

fhg: what you say or imply here highlights something which I find distinctly questionable, nay paradoxical in the HIPP 'manifesto' - the idea that as years go by we can get, and are still miraculously getting, ever closer to the way music was originally played. Something distinctly counter-intuitive here, eh?

I do of course fully agree that it's good to rediscover old instruments and get absolutely all we can out of written sources, but surely there are a still a lot of lines to draw between these dots? And Mendelssohn's instruments were so much closer than we were to the time of Bach, and surely not all the habits/ instincts of his players would have been new and alien to Beethoven or even to Bach. Some of this undocumented, undocumentable stuff may have passed down to the orchestras whose styles are documented by sound recording.

In our assumptions that everything in modern, say early C20, playing styles has to be questioned, and even a priori discarded, isn't there a great risk that certain properly preserved babies have gone out with the bathwater?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

fhg: what you say or imply here highlights something which I find distinctly questionable, nay paradoxical in the HIPP 'manifesto' - the idea that as years go by we can get, and are still miraculously getting, ever closer to the way music was originally played. Something distinctly counter-intuitive here, eh?
I do of course fully agree that it's good to rediscover old instruments and get absolutely all we can out of written sources, but surely there are a still a lot of lines to draw between these dots? And Mendelssohn's instruments were so much closer than we were to the time of Bach, and surely not all the habits/ instincts of his players would have been new and alien to Beethoven or even to Bach. Some of this undocumented, undocumentable stuff may have passed down to the orchestras whose styles are documented by sound recording.
In our assumptions that everything in modern, say early C20, playing styles has to be questioned, and even a priori discarded, isn't there a great risk that certain properly preserved babies have gone out with the bathwater?

LMP: what you say or imply here highlights something that I've encountered elsewhere from people who question the value of HIPP - first that there is a "HIPP 'manifesto'" (if there is such a thing, I have never encountered it - perhaps my collection of Karajan recordings disbars me from access to it?) and second that someone making a statement that "[Mendelssohn's] Musicians didn't play Modern instruments, nor have some Modern playing techniques, nor were as large as some of the Modern Professional Orchestras which have recorded this repertoire" isn't a statement of fact, but is really some kind of code behind which somebody actually means that modern orchestras should be banned from playing Mendelssohn. Or, at the very least, that "didn't ... have some Modern playing techniques" becomes "understood" as an "assumption that everything in modern ... playing styles has to be questioned."

Of course you are not saying or implying any such "code"; but it's interesting that you raise such points in your post in response to my response to rfg's questioning why anyone should want a HIPP recording of this repertoire. The simple answer to this question is "because it sounds different and because it affords us new perspectives on the timbres and balances that composers were acquainted with and were expecting to hear from the instruments for which they wrote."

"Properly preserved babies"?

[Parry1912]

Yes - it's wonderful - and so are the MSND pieces that come as the coupling. Much my favourite disc of orchestral Mendelssohn on period instruments.

Agreed. Lovely to hear an ophicleide in the MSND overture!