ALC 0175 Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto Op. 64 & Violin Concerto in D minor, MWV O3

Few composers embody one of the nineteenth century’s most fertile apparent contradictions as naturally as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847): being fully Romantic without renouncing a concern for form; cultivating the urgency of expression without giving way to excess; speaking the language of modernity while remaining firmly anchored in the Classical ideal of balance. In Mendelssohn, poetry and architecture do not stand in opposition; on the contrary, they coexist in a synthesis as rare as it is perfect, in which structural clarity becomes the conditio sine qua non of expressive intensity.
The two violin concertos brought together in this recording—the youthful Concerto in D minor for Violin and Strings, MWV O3, composed in 1822, and the celebrated Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, of 1844—bear witness to this dual nature of Mendelssohn’s art. Separated by more than twenty years, they almost define the entire arc of the composer’s creative life: the first belongs to the extraordinary period of adolescence, the second to the full maturity of his artistic achievement. Yet, beyond the chronological distance and the different formal and instrumental ambitions of the two works, there appears to be no break between them. The Mendelssohn of the Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, does not contradict the young composer of the Concerto in D minor; rather, he brings him to completion.