Felix Mendelssohn & Enescu: Octets

Featuring

Ilya Gringolts
Anahit Kurtikyan
Silvia Simionescu
Claudius Hermann
Antti Tikkanen
Minna Pensola

Atte Kilpeläinen
Tomas Djupsjöbacka
Gringolts Quartet
Meta4
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
George Enescu

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Instruments

The Meta4 quartet's violinist Antti Tikkanen plays a violin made by Antonius Stradivarius in 1699, on loan from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Composer Biography

George Enescu, originally from Romania, was a child prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatoire at age fourteen to study composition, violin, and piano.

Compositional Technique

Mendelssohn's Octet treats its eight instruments as a single unit, playing together from start to finish in a "symphonic orchestral style."

Composition History

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was only sixteen when he started writing his Octet, but he had already composed a significant catalogue of works.

Compositional Technique

Enescu's Octet is structured as a single symphonic movement in gigantic sonata form, with its four linked movements serving as exposition, development, and recapitulation.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Enescu, a polyphonist, believed music was about expressive musical lines that could be developed, contrasted, and superimposed, rather than just sequences of chords.

Critical Reception

Enescu's Octet was initially deemed "incomprehensibly modernist" and its premiere was abandoned after five rehearsals, only taking place nine years later.