Format : Sheet music
In 1832 the Royal Philharmonic Society of London honoured the young German composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy with several commissions. One of the works composed as a result was the A major symphony the Italian based on Mendelssohn s experiences in Italy in 1830 and 1831. The work was premiered in 1833 conducted by the composer.Today the Italian Symphony has a firm place in the canon of classical masterworks though at its premiere and both the following performances the work was not entirely positively received.Mendelssohn himself was unhappy with it. In 1834 he revised the last three movements but didnot complete this revision. To this day the early version of the Italian is the one played everywhere whilst the revised version has remained to a large extent unknown. Bärenreiter s critical new edition edited by Christopher Hogwood includes all the performance material for the complete version of 1833 together with the last three movements in the composer s revised version. Conductors can now choose between the early and revised versions; the revised one includes the first movement from the early version.- A famous work for the Mendelssohn anniversary year in a new Urtext edition.- With the well-known early version and the composer s revised version.- Includes an informative foreword in English and German.- With facsimile pages.- Full score & performance material (BA9094) available for sale.
SKU: BR.PB-5581
ISBN 9790004213919. 10 x 12.5 inches.
A Programmatic Declaration of BeliefFelix Mendelssohn Bartholdy composed his Reformation Symphony for the celebrations marking the 300th anniversary of the Confessio Augustana, the Protestant declaration of faith. Owing to various and only partially explained reasons, there was no performance in 1830, the year in question; it was only two years later that the composer conducted the premiere of his work, now heavily revised, in Berlin. There was only one more performance in Mendelssohn's lifetime, this one conducted by Julius Rietz in Dusseldorf; the composer had since distanced himself from his opus.Conceived for the concert hall, the symphony formulates its theological references through the integration of various motives. This occurs in the finale, for example, in which Mendelssohn quotes the Luther chorale Ein feste Burg in the flute, from where it builds up to a triumphant principal theme. The strong extra-musical aspect must have been one of the reasons for the composer's later avoidance of this score, especially since Mendelssohn was becoming increasingly skeptical about explicitly programmatic music in the instrumental domain. Next to the Dusseldorf performance material of 1837, two scribal copies have been examined for the first time; they transmit the main stages of the version of 1830.
SKU: BR.OB-5581-16
ISBN 9790004343210. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5581-23
ISBN 9790004343234. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.PB-5598-07
ISBN 9790004214954. 6.5 x 9 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5581-27
ISBN 9790004343241. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5581-19
ISBN 9790004343227. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5581-30
ISBN 9790004343258. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5581-15
ISBN 9790004343203. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5310-30
ISBN 9790004339947. 10 x 12.5 inches.
To all extents and purposes, Germany is the land of artists, wrote Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in 1831 while on his travels in Italy; but Italy, he added, is the land of art. Indeed, everywhere he went in Italy, the 22-year-old composer found impulses for his symphony: I have to save the work until I have seen Naples. But although the country fired his inspiration: It will be the merriest piece that I have ever written, he did not actually write the Italian Symphony there. This did not occur until early 1833, when Mendelssohn obtained a commission from London, where he then conducted the first performance in May 1833. Begun the following year, his revision of the piece remained fragmentary, and the composer no longer performed the work himself. The familiar London version thus represents the only closed form of the work which the composer presented to the public. This is the version of the Italian Symphony that is now appearing in the Breitkopf Urtext collection based on the Complete Edition.
SKU: BR.OB-5310-27
ISBN 9790004339930. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.PB-5522-07
ISBN 9790004212530. 6.5 x 9 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5310-19
ISBN 9790004339916. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.OB-5310-23
ISBN 9790004339923. 10 x 12.5 inches.
SKU: BR.SON-443
ISBN 9790004803516. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Mendelssohn's ConfessionThe Reformation Symphony, misleadingly numbered posthumously as 5 by its publishers, was Mendelssohn's first confrontation with the large symphonic form in Beethoven's wake. Linking it conceptually with the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 1830 seems to have first occurred late in the progress of its composition, yet the premiere did not take place until 1832 and ultimately even enabled the composer to distance himself completely from his work and its concept. Thanks to access to a new source [or, ... new access to sources... or ...new access to a source...?], this edition can now finally refute the legend that a separate original or early version of the symphony once existed.
SKU: BR.SON-410
ISBN 9790004802427. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Once again, musicological source studies preparing the publication of the volume in the Leipziger Mendelssohn-Ausgabe have provided a major surprise: the London version of June 1842 has survived in a copy of the score. Only with this score can the composer's (first) revision after the first performance in Leipzig be interpreted lucidly. A new light is thus cast on the often played Scottish Symphony which, incidentally, Mendelssohn never called as such.
