MENDELSSOHN, Felix: Symphonies, Vol. 3 (Fey) - String Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 9 (Felix Mendelssohn)

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German conductor Thomas Fey and his Heidelberger Sinfoniker have made a name for themselves with historically oriented performances of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, often featuring very quick tempi and sharp articulation along with period brasses. They're startling and bracing performances, and, when applied to Mendelssohn, the effect is even more unusual. For many listeners it will be sharply at odds with what they're expecting to hear. Is this because Fey has finally gone too far, or simply because Mendelssohn's music has been encrusted from the start with Victorian sentimentalism and was especially ripe for reinterpretation? Fey makes a good case for the latter. His earlier Mendelssohn discs programmed early string symphonies along with one of the composer's five mature symphonies, but this one is entirely devoted to the string symphonies, composed when Mendelssohn was between 11 and 13 years old. Instead of a fragile hothouse prodigy, Mendelssohn here appears as an ambitious young genius with Beethoven on his mind. Fey digs into the contrapuntal writing, totally divesting it of any scholastic qualities, and he imbues the minor-key pieces with a weighty air of drama. He makes some questionable choices (as he usually does); the outer movements of the String Symphony No. 2 in D major (tracks 4-6) have a nervous quality, and in his attempt to delineate the newly expanded dimensions in the concluding String Symphony No. 9 in C major, he offers not one of his characteristic quick tempos but a ponderously slow one in the Allegro section of the opening movement. Along the way, however, are numerous passages in which the young Mendelssohn seems almost palpably to be growing into his adult musical languages. Fey is a conductor capable of rethinking a composer's style from the ground up, and producing results that make sense. He has generally done so here. The results, in works often treated as something to play while the audience gets settled in their seats, are not even remotely dull, but listeners should sample here to make sure they know what they're getting into.
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