Customer Reviews

The 99 Most Essential Mendelssohn Masterpieces (Amazon Exclusive)

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This is a great collection of the music of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, which shows the complexity and depth of his compositions.

Mendelssohn's music can still suffer from a reputation of superficiality. Most of this can be traced back to the anti-Semitic ravings of Richard Wagner, who made Mendelssohn a prime case in point in his pamphlet "Das Judenthum in der Musik" (Jewishness in Music). Wagner wrote that Mendelssohn's music is "sweet and tinkling without depth". This became practically official goverment policy in Germany under the Nazis -- one of the first actions at the Berlin Philharmonic after the Nazis came to power was to take down Mendelssohn's picture from the concert hall.

Wagner's views took hold in England, and thus indirectly in the US as well, through critics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially George Bernard Shaw. Shaw was the author of "The Perfect Wagnerite" and an unabashed Wagner aficionado. He criticized Mendelssohn's "conventional sentimentality". Mendelssohn was eventually linked in the public consciousness with the values and culture of the Victorian era, and thus suffered neglect when those values were outgrown.

Even after World War II, Mendelssohn was rather on the fringe rather than the core of performance in most of Germany, except perhaps in Leipzig, where he was remembered as former conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and founder of the music conservatory.

The result of all this is that a few key pieces, like the Overture and Wedding March from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the Violin Concerto, have become overplayed staples, while others works were often second-string concert fillers. His chamber works are performed quite a bit, but these draw smaller crowds than symphonies.

But I think one of the reasons criticisms of Mendelssohn gained so much traction is that there is a kernel of oversimplified truth to them. Mendelssohn's music is indeed fairly upbeat a lot of the time. Today we would call it "accessible", which can be a dirty word in many circles. He was certainly not a brooding musical soul, pouring out his pathos like a Mahler, or a musical ideologue like Wagner. His music is easy to like and easy to listen to. But you can say the same of Mozart.

Despite all this, the compositions in this collection show, starting out with the first track ("The Hebrides"), that Mendelssohn really was a composer of depth with tremendous ability and a broad emotional palette -- including a good dose of melancholy, if not pathos. Check out the 5th Symphony, or the 1st. Or the concertos for one or two pianos. Or any number of chamber works, such as Piano Trio No. 1, early String Symphonies, or the sonatas. There is emotional range and depth to burn.

The orchestral works are perhaps the heart of the set, with all but one of Mendelssohn's five symphonies included. Except for two symphonies performed by the Bamberg symphony Orchestra under Austrian conductor Han Swarowsky, they are by different orchestras and conductors. I really enjoyed the 1st Symphony performed by the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Shostakovich (Dmitri's son). The omnipresent Violin Concerto is performed ably by soloist Jaime Laredo and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the lesser-known Concerto for Violin and Strings is also here. There are good performances of both Piano Concertos as well as both Concertos for Two Pianos. Only the double concerto for piano and violin is missing among the concertos.

The set has a broad and satisfying selection of chamber music, including the Clarinet Sonata, the two excellent String Quintets, Piano Trio No. 1, the 1838 Violin Sonata, and two of the 12 String Symphonies he wrote as a child. There is also a nice selection of organ music, with the Three Preludes and Fugues for Organ, and two of his six Organ Sonatas.

The parts of Mendelssohn's work that appear underrepresented are sacred and choral works, and songs. Psalm 42 is included in its entirety, and selections from "Three Psalms" and "Sechs Sprüche" for Choir. These offer a glimpse into this part of Mendelssohn's work. But as with all these collections, it is always possible to argue about what is included and what is left out -- there is no way to satisfy everybody.

The performances, as with most of the collections by X5 in its "Most Essential" series, are first rate, but are generally not by the most famous names. I have listened to extended samples from all the works here, and was impressed by the overall performance quality.

Bitrates vary from 184 to 247 Kbps, with most in the 220s or 230s. Only two tracks are below 200 Kbps. I haven't come across any disappointing encoding artifacts or distortion so far -- quality seems good from a technical standpoint too. Total download size is a humongous 1.08 GB.

Overall, this is a great collection of excellent music by a composer that deserves a lot more credit and attention than history has given him. Highly recommended!

After having some sound quality issues with the large collections, I am happy with this one. A good selection of Mendelssohn with the favorite pieces represented. At the price of $1.99 you can't beat it. If you are new to classical it is a great introduction to Mendelssohn and if you already have a collection, this is a good one-source compilation. Download and enjoy!

...though the price of this collection appears to have increased from $1.99 to $2.49 (the price at which I purchased it), it remains an absolute steal. It would be a steal at ten times its current cost, particularly if you consider the typical cost to download individual tracks. The sound quality is fantastic, the level of musicianship is amazing. Admittedly, for reasons I'm not entirely able to pinpoint, I was hesitant to purchase any of these "99 most" series (or the other releases put out by this label, "X5"), but I will certainly be purchasing more in the future.

Highly recommended!

The level of performance is mainly high on these 99 tracks, only a few trashy duds. Thank you Amazon for these wonderful new additions to my library.