SKU: BR.SON-442
ISBN 9790004803509. 10 x 12.5 inches.
This volume contains three reworkings and orchestrations of religious works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy which were originally set for smaller ensembles (solo voices, four-part chorus and organ). They were composed at different times and for different occasions, two of them as commissions. The anthem ,,Why, o Lord, delay forever MWV A 19 was originally the sacred vocal piece MWV B 33, published in England in 1841 with the additional title ,,[…] The Thirteenth Psalm, and in Germany in the same year as ,,Lass, o Herr, mich Hilfe finden with the title ,,Drei geistliche Lieder which was composed at the suggestion of the English literature and music lover Charles B. Broadley who also provided the paraphrase of the psalm text. After Mendelssohn had refused an initial request by Broadley to furnish the anthem post festum with an organ prelude, the composer did not want to turn down a second request to orchestrate the work and he even expanded the existing material with a lengthy closing fugue involving additional trumpets and timpani. The ,,Ave Maria MWV B 19 was written in connection with Mendelssohn's appointment as municipal music director, a position which at the same time included the responsibility for the musical organization of church services. The instrumentation of the work with an accompaniment of two clarinets and two bassoons as well as low strings was due to the fact that the organ in Dusseldorf's principal church St. Lambertus was out of order for an extended period of time, and Mendelssohn considered this solution explicitly only as a surrogate for the organ should there be none. A further psalm paraphrase in English, this time by William Bartholomew, of the hymn ,,Hear my prayer MWV B 49 was set to music in early 1844; the orchestration of the organ part commissioned by the distinguished Dublin musician Joseph Robinson was not completed until 1847 so that the premiere finally only took place after Mendelssohn's death. In the further course of the century ,,Hear my prayer would, particularly in the version with organ accompaniment, come to enjoy great popularity in Great Britain and Ireland.
SKU: BR.SON-433
ISBN 9790004802892. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's violin concerto op. 64 had - like many of his other works - a lengthy genesis: it is in the summer of 1838 that surviving documents first mention the promise made to his friend Ferdinand David, concert master of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, to write, besides a sonata, a grand solo concerto for him. Ultimately, work on this opus continued - with some longer interruptions - until September 1844. Even then, it owed its preliminary completion in no small measure to the constant urging of the prospective solo violinist. But after the ,,official handing-over of the parts to David and a first joint rehearsal of the concert in Leipzig Mendelssohn continued working on the score. There subsequently began an intensive correspondence with David between Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main, where Mendelssohn resided with his family, in particular concerning issues of the principal part and the reworking of the solo cadence. In March 1845 the then current version of the work was premiered in a subscribers' concert in Leipzig.This volume deals with Mendelssohn's first complete manuscript of the score with the corrections contained therein, including all surviving drafts and sketches; also included is the epistolary evidence of the correspondence with Ferdinand David prior to the premiere. The further developments up to the printing of the main version of op. 64 by Breitkopf & Hartel are dealt with in Series II, Vol. 7 of the edition.
SKU: BR.SON-422
ISBN 9790004802670. 9 x 12 inches.
The music world has long been familiar with Mendelssohn's celebrated, standard-setting Piano Trio in D minor op. 49. No one, however, knew how many stages this masterpiece went through before it was finally published in 1840. According to preliminary sketches that can no longer be reconstructed, the early version of the of the work in its traditional piano-trio scoring was written in spring 1839. It was given its first performance at the Mendelssohn home in Berlin and remained unpublished. The following year, Mendelssohn brought out a version of the work with flute instead of violin at the request of an English publisher. He had already strongly reworked the original version for the publication. Another revision was made of the flute version, which not only took into account the different technical possibilities of a wind instrument, but also affected the compositional substance of the work. Thus Mendelssohn very nearly did write his D minor Piano Trio three times!
