Oh dear Felix....

[Braunschlag]

These are really beautiful too...... why do you think they get recorded so often...?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...ons+sérieuses

I'd forgotten about them! Used to be an excellent recording of Perahia on CBS doing these, sure I had it at one point. Predictive text tries to convert Perahia into Pershing! Shurely shome mistake?

[pastoralguy]

I find that predictive text attempts to change Brahms into Brains!

[Serial_Apologist]

I find that predictive text attempts to change Brahms into Brains!

Ken Dodd's one funny joke was when he was asked at a concert what he thought of Brahms, and he replied that they were the best things ever invented for pushing babies around in.

Well, I thought it was quite funny... at the time...

[jayne lee wilson]

I'd forgotten about them! Used to be an excellent recording of Perahia on CBS doing these, sure I had it at one point. Predictive text tries to convert Perahia into Pershing! Shurely shome mistake?

Their brevity led to their use as album-filler, which means they do get overlooked. I'm partial to Sofronitsky's 1950 Denon-JP recording (c/w a lovely Beethoven OP.28, Mozart k.396 Fantasy & Schumann Kreisleriana - excellent recital) , though it might be hard to find now...

[Barbirollians]

I have been listening to a lovely Mendelssohn piano music record by Valerie Tryon on APR I found in a charity shop . No tweeness in her Variations Serieuse.

That Perahia record is also very fine .

[cloughie]

I find that predictive text attempts to change Brahms into Brains!

Well he must have been quite bright to write such great music!

[EdgeleyRob]

Well I'm a lover of all things Mendelssohn.
I have listened to the all Organ Sonatas many times in one go,nice.
I enjoy the Piano Sonatas a lot,although the fact that not many big name pianists seem to touch them perhaps means they are not all that.
I love this wannabe Hammerklavier.

[Parry1912]

Mendelssohn was a genius - though Elijah and St Paul are a bit hard to take

I really like Elijah (I don't know St. Paul well enough to judge)

[Vox Humana]

One problem organists have is that that there is little truly great organ music by first-stream composers after Bach. How many other instruments have been so badly served? The guitar certainly; maybe the harp. If you dig deep enough, you will find that most of the "great" composers wrote something for organ, but it generally turns out to have been a student exercise of no great merit (e.g. Dvorak's preludes; Debussy's fugue), or written for a Flötenuhr. Greater acclaim was to be had on other platforms, so, if you had it, you didn't tend to flaunt it in the organ loft. Mendelssohn peaked early with his octet (written when he was 16) and it's hardly surprising that he didn't manage to maintain the same level of brilliance consistently thereafter; it would have been a tall order - and what composer succeeded? What I can't forgive is his final cadences. So often a well-argued movement with taut rhythms/textures and mounting interest peters out in an anti-climactic final cadence of two or three straight, mundane chords. The organ sonatas are no exception. Probably Mendelssohn intended these cadences to sound solidly grand, but to me they never do. Also the sonatas were never really conceived as such. An English publisher asked Mendelssohn for a set of voluntaries. As I understand it (but I'm open to correction) he responded by cobbling up some suites that made significant use of miscellaneous pieces he'd sketched earlier. Back in the '80s (?) Novello published a collected edition of his organ works that included all the early versions.

I once rather mischievously described Elijah as "Stainer with quality". Mendelssohn does have a lot to answer for, although it's hardly his fault. It was his less talented, pale imitators that gave Victorian music its bad name. His almost-exact contemporary, Sebastian Wesley, was nowhere near so influential. The saccharine insipidity of much Victorian music hasn't done Mendelssohn any retrospective favours.

[Richard Barrett]

One problem organists have is that that there is little truly great organ music by first-stream composers after Bach.

There's Messiaen of course. And numerous other composers of the second half of the 20th century: Cage, Kagel and Ligeti spring to mind.

As for Mendelssohn, there are his very early string symphonies, composed under the clear influence of those by CPE Bach, which have a spark of energy and inspiration about them, but the rest of it I find awfully bland. It shows how far you can go with immense skill and not much else: not very far.

[Dave2002]

There's Messiaen of course. And numerous other composers of the second half of the 20th century: Cage, Kagel and Ligeti spring to mind.

As for Mendelssohn, there are his very early string symphonies, composed under the clear influence of those by CPE Bach, which have a spark of energy and inspiration about them, but the rest of it I find awfully bland. It shows how far you can go with immense skill and not much else: not very far.

Bruch is remembered almost solely for his violin concerto. Mendelssohn is surely on a different level - not to disparage Bruch, but .... The (so called) 3rd and 4th Symphonies, the violin concerto plus the string octet as well as a reasonable number of other works, such as the piano trios and cello sonatas demonstrate more than mere competence.

Although Bach, Beethoven and Mozart all have a larger number of works which are at a high level of inspiration, there is a lot of music by all of those which is arguably not so interesting, and indeed most composers would not get to write great works if they didn't write a lot of not so great works as well. Of course some composers try to evaluate their own output, and cull those works which they decide aren't so good, though in some cases other musicians and publishers go and "rescue" the works which have been put aside.

[jayne lee wilson]

There's Messiaen of course. And numerous other composers of the second half of the 20th century: Cage, Kagel and Ligeti spring to mind.

As for Mendelssohn, there are his very early string symphonies, composed under the clear influence of those by CPE Bach, which have a spark of energy and inspiration about them, but the rest of it I find awfully bland. It shows how far you can go with immense skill and not much else: not very far.

I can see how the symphonies 1-5 might not appeal to you personally (I adore them)... but the String Quartets? Especially Op.12 and Op.13 - wonderfully re-creative responses to late Beethoven; and above all the tragic, death's-door masterpiece of Op. 80.... (whose stature so utterly overwhelms & impresses me, I can only imagine you don't yet know it, Richard..)

[ahinton]

I can see how the symphonies 1-5 might not appeal to you personally (I adore them)... but the String Quartets? Especially Op.12 and Op.13 - wonderfully re-creative responses to late Beethoven; and above all the tragic, death's-door masterpiece of Op. 80.... (whose stature so utterly overwhelms & impresses me, I can only imagine you don't yet know it, Richard..)

The six quartets are indeed excellent but that final one Op. 80 is unlike anything that FM ever did and I concur wholly with you on this!

[Richard Barrett]

I can only imagine you don't yet know it, Richard..

This is true. I shall put it right immediately.

[cloughie]

There's Messiaen of course. And numerous other composers of the second half of the 20th century: Cage, Kagel and Ligeti spring to mind.

As for Mendelssohn, there are his very early string symphonies, composed under the clear influence of those by CPE Bach, which have a spark of energy and inspiration about them, but the rest of it I find awfully bland. It shows how far you can go with immense skill and not much else: not very far.

Bland, as Jonny Mac said ....

How on earth can you describe his 3rd and 5th Symphonies of MND as bland, ah well your loss!