Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: String Quartet Op. 12, String Quintet Op. 18, Minuetto

Featuring

Josef Klusoň
Václav Remeš
Vlastimil Holek
Michal Kaňka
František Souček
Petr Střížek

Petr Holman
Vladimír Fortin
Pražák Quartet
Zemlinsky Quartet
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

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Performer Biography

Josef Klusoň, the violist for the Pražák Quartet on this recording, also founded the Pražák Quartet in 1972 with Václav Remeš.

Critical Reception

After Mendelssohn's death, composers like Berlioz and Wagner (under the pseudonym 'Karl Freigedank') diminished his reputation, with Wagner publishing a hateful pamphlet titled 'Judaism in Music'.

Performer Biography

The Zemlinsky Quartet, formerly known as the Penguin Quartet, won the 3rd prize and the Audience Prize at the London International String Quartet Competition in 2006.

Composition History

The String Quintet, Op.18, included a new Intermezzo composed in Paris at the specific request of violinist Pierre Marie Baillot, replacing an earlier Minuetto.

Historical Context

Mendelssohn's music was banned and his scores destroyed in Germany during the Third Reich, and many of his youthful works were not published until the early 1960s.

Composer Biography

Mendelssohn, raised in a Jewish household, had to immerse himself and his sister Fanny in Western culture, including three languages (Goethe, Voltaire, Shakespeare) in addition to Hebrew, between the ages of eight and fifteen.

Compositional Technique

Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E flat major, Op.12, uses a cyclic process, notably by repeating the last twenty bars of the first movement in the coda of the finale, a technique later used by Béla Bartók.