Search - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Shlomo Mintz, Paul Ostrovsky :: Mendelssohn: Violinsonaten [Violin Sonatas]

REISSUED

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 01/12/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These performances should no longer be so hard to find as they once were, having now been reissued on DG as part of the Gramophone Awards Collection. They received the chamber music award for 1988, the award being made presumably for originality and enterprise in the choice of music as much as for the quality of performance and recording. I had not been hearing much from or about the performers in recent years, but a little basic research informs me that Mintz has gone into conducting and Ostrovsky into teaching.



These sonatas are not the greatest Mendelssohn, but I am well supplied with that and can hear it any time I choose. These are still fine music and they give a fascinating glimpse into an extraordinary career that was cut short too early. Wagner did not find his true musical voice until he was older than Mendelssohn lived to be, and the first sonata here, written when the composer was all of 13, seems to me closer to his best than Tannhaeuser is to Wagner's. Like the string symphonies, it doesn't yet show his distinctive individual tone such as we hear in the rondo capriccioso that followed not much later and in the octet and Midsummer Night's Dream overture in short order after that. The liner-note writer is very likely right in detecting the influence of Beethoven's `Tempest' sonata in the first movement, but right or not that is a very minor element in the piece. The other sonata comes from 15 years later, and for some reason Mendelssohn never published it. The version we are given here is a reconstruction by Menuhin from the composer's manuscripts. It is much more the Mendelssohn we know, with fine vigorous first and last movements and a slow movement reminiscent of some of the Songs Without Words.



I find nothing to criticise in either performance or recording. These days there are no doubt dozens and scores of accomplished duos who could play the pieces as well if they chose to play them at all. Mintz and Ostrovsky have actually done it, and done it extremely well. I see no reason to think that if I had been awarding the prize in 1988 I would not have given it to this disc."

One of My Favorites

L. Flier | Buffalo, NY | 03/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've had this recording for years and it's never gotten old for me. The music is lovely, as is the musicianship. And the recording is very clear. I like to play it in the evening. The Adagio of the first sonata has a wonderfully tranquil mood."