Mendelssohn: String Symphonies Nos. 1-6

It was thanks to his father's preference for holding musical concerts on Sunday mornings in the family home in Berlin that eleven-year-old Felix Mendelssohn set himself to composing a more extensive series of string symphonies, which also received their first performances. His music and composition lessons greatly inspired him; his diligence and youthful creativity developed early and made astonishing progress. In 1821, he created the first half of the string symphonies, which were composed in just under two years. At the performances held as part of the house concerts, he himself took over the conducting of the chamber orchestra, which consisted of amateurs and professional musicians from the Berlin Court Orchestra. The form and instrumentation of the first six of his twelve symphonies in total follow the model of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's "Hamburg Symphonies": they are in three movements and scored solely for string instruments. They are merely stylistically derivative to the greatest extent; Mendelssohn mostly experimented quite freely with the chosen models. At about the same time—around 1821/22—the thirteen-year-old composed a first concerto for violin and string orchestra for his violin teacher Eduard Rietz, which Rietz may have performed at the "Sunday Musics" at the Mendelssohn home. It is based on the concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, but clearly sounds like Mendelssohn. Since the long-lost manuscripts were rediscovered, Mendelssohn's youth works have become a permanent part of the repertoire of string and chamber orchestras. The new album from BR Klassik brings together Mendelssohn's early violin concerto and the first six of his string symphonies as studio recordings by the Munich Radio Orchestra under the direction of its first concertmaster Henry Raudales, an award-winning violinist who has recorded numerous performances as a conductor and soloist with the ensemble.