Mendelssohn: String Quintets (Complete)

MusicWeb - Recording of the Year 2008

"So unfamiliar as this repertoire is, it repays the effort in getting to know it, and one can hardly imagine these works being given a more sympathetic reading."
(MusicWeb June 2008)

"The performances here by the Fine Arts Quartet, augmented with violist Danilo Rossi, are tight, lucid, energetic, and life affirming...This disc should be heard by anyone who enjoys Mendelssohn's music in general and his chamber music in particular."
--Review by Allmusicguide.com

Mendelssohn's musical precocity, both as a player and as a performer, manifested itself at a remarkably early age. In 1826, when he was only 17, Mendelssohn wrote not only his Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream but the first of his two string quintets. The String Quintet No. 2 followed 19 years later, in 1845, two years before his death. Despite the intervening years, the two Quintets are similar in style and form, with richly melodic and haunting slow movements and two wonderfully contrasting scherzos. It is interesting to compare the two String Quintets with the impressive Octet of 1825 (recorded on Naxos 8.557270).