Search - Mendelssohn, Prosseda :: Mendelssohn: Rarities [Italy]

Rare Repertoire Receives Virtuosity and Musicianship of a Ra

Gerald Parker | Rouyn-Noranda, QC., Dominion of Canada | 07/25/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Now this listener has the chance to be the first to write an review of Roberto Prosseda's "Mendelssohn Rarities" (Italy: Decca 476-5277), as earlier (the first for Amazon's Canadian and U.K. WWW sites, but second for Amazon's American site) for the companion disc, "Mendelssohn Discoveries" (Italy: Decca 476-3038). The music on the "Rarities" disc dates from a narrower time period in the life of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, from an age, 11, when boys are at the very cusp of puberty, to his mid-teens, encompassing only the years 1820-1826. The "Discoveries" disc had included works, from 1823-1837 (plus an arrangement from 1844 of a work not originally for solo keyboard). Both discs include music for solo piano claimed to be receiving their first recordings.



The incredible pace of development of Mendelssohn's compositional skills on this "Rarities" disc boggles the mind! For example, consider the four sonatas, all from the same year, 1820. The first has a basically conventional mid-classic style that gives place stylistically (with much increased range of virtuosity, emotional range, and full-fledged Romantic lyricism and bravura, respectively) to the much more adventurous third and fourth sonatas. The two fugues (1826) are of a contrapuntal perfection and majesty of expression as fine as any fugues apart from those of J.S. Bach and Luigi Cherubini, both composers who greatly influced Mendelssohn, and with a skill attained at such an even earlier age in Mendelssoh's case!



Roberto Prosseda rises to the challenge of the music even more thoroughly than he did in the works that he recorded for the "Discoveries" CD release. He plays the "Rarities" without the at times unwanted caution that just marginally at times flawed his achievement in "Discoveries". In this recording, Prosseda holds nothing back, his Romantic grandeur of expression surging to the fullest extent in realising the vitality and force of the most ambitious of these early works by Mendelssohn, performing everthing with consummate care and conviction.



Both CDs are essential to the committed lover of Mendelssohn's music, but for those who want to try one before deciding to buy both, it would seem advisable to begin with this disc of "Rarities", so fine is it compared even to Prosseda's "Discoveries" CD. If one does not already own recordings of the better-known piano works, more widely published over the years in printed editions of the composer's piano music, and which also have been recorded many times, a music-lover, of course, should begin collecting Mendelssohn's recorded piano music with them, but Prosseda's CDs of first recordings of rare and previously unrecorded works of Mendelssohn's promotes these till now obscure works quite splendidly, indeed!

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