MENDELSSOHN: The Complete String Symphonies – Festival Strings Lucerne/ Achim Fiedler – Oehms Classics OC 749 TT (3 CDs) 3:34:35 [Distrib. by Naxos] ****:
If Mendelssohn had completed the trajectory mapped by his early compositions, he would have ended up in the company of the three or four very greatest composers. As it is, most would agree he didn’t fulfill the staggering promise of his youth, but it’s gratifying to note that his reputation has been rehabilitated in the last half of the 20th century so that he can take his rightful place among the greatest of Romantic composers.
But back to those compositions of his early years, and specifically the Twelve String Symphonies (in the present recording augmented by an abortive Thirteenth Symphony in C Minor). Composed in the years 1821 to 1823 (Mendelssohn’s twelfth through fourteenth years), they demonstrate the incredible native talent of the boy as well as the prodigious growth he made in very short order. Of course, they reflect the tastes and prejudices of his teacher Friedrich Zelter (for example, the penchant for Baroque forms and a love for C. P. E. Bach) and also how well grounded in the Classical masters, from Haydn through Weber and Schubert, Zelter left his young pupil. And they are, after all, student compositions in which Mendelssohn learned the complicated ropes of sonata form, counterpoint, instrumentation, rhythm, key relationships, modulation, and all the rest. However, the favor that they’ve found with listeners since their composition attests to their real musical value.
Even the first six symphonies, all fairly short and in three instead of the usual four movements, bubble with bright ideas and memorable melodies and episodes. By the Ninth Symphony of 1823, we have the first evidences of the Mendelssohn to come: he writes his first symphonic scherzo, a Schweizerleid based on music he heard while on holiday with his family in Switzerland. So this is the first of his travelogue-symphonies as well. As the very detailed notes to the recording say, this is a scherzo without trio like those from the Octet and Midsummer Night’s Dream Music, but it is also in the nature of a character piece like the Songs without Words.
The Swiss influence carries over into the Eleventh Symphony, where the Schweizerleid scherzo surprisingly introduces Turkish percussion, very strikingly recorded on the current CD. Mendelssohn the perfectionist suppressed this movement in his autograph score, an obvious mistake since it helps make this the most varied and adventurous of the String Symphonies, if not the most accomplished.
The booklet notes tell us that conductor Achim Fiedler has pored over the scores of these symphonies a great deal, and I’m inclined to believe it. He has made some interesting interpretive choices, not the least his decision to include the rarely offered Thirteenth Symphony. His care with these works informs the whole set, which he conducts and which the Festival Strings play with youthful high spirits. The Allegros go by at whip-cracking speeds, and this adds to the exhilaration of the whole enterprise. But the slow music has as much tenderness as you could ask for. I’ve been mostly happy with my version of the String Symphonies featuring Ross Pople and the London Festival Orchestra (Hyperion), but those performances sound too refined, even polite, next to the version under review. The Oehms engineers have provided clean, very present sonics that faithfully project the sound of a medium-sized hall, or so I’d guess. This is the version of the String Symphonies I’ll be returning to most often from now on.
– Lee Passarella
