Mendelssohn: Works for Solo Piano Vol. 3

All the works included here were composed between 1825 and 1835, when Felix Mendelssohn was between sixteen and twenty-six years old. He spent a large part of this decade traveling, from Berlin to Weimar and Paris, then to London and Scotland, before his work in Düsseldorf eventually led to his appointment as municipal music director and conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. The "Piano Sonata in E major" and the "Piano Sonata in B-flat major" as well as the "Fantasie" (subtitled "Sonate écossaise") look back to Beethoven, but are also influenced by Carl Maria von Weber, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Ignaz Moscheles (to whom the Fantasie is dedicated). The two shorter works ("Scherzo à capriccio" and "Capriccio") perhaps show a more relaxed side of the composer, free from the constraints of sonata form. Franz Liszt’s virtuosic arrangement of themes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" rounds off the program. Born in Manchester in 1953, Peter Donohoe studied at Chetham's School of Music for seven years, graduated in music from the University of Leeds, and subsequently studied at the Royal Northern College of Music with Derek Wyndham and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. Praised for his musicality, stylistic versatility, and sovereign technique, he has become one of the leading pianists of our time.