Felix Mendelssohn & Enescu: Octets

Album review

Mendelssohn’s precocity is simply stunning. In a lot of ways, it reminds us of Mozart’s, but Mendelssohn’s early pieces are even more impressive in terms of quality and expressiveness. When, at the age of 16, Mendelssohn composed his famous Octet, a piece whose perfect style never ceases to amaze us, the teenager had already written a lot of music, including twelve symphonies for string orchestra, many concertos and five operas.

With this Octet, composed in what he called “the style of an orchestral symphony,” Mendelssohn created a score in eight parts, as opposed to the double quartet explored in his earlier pieces. Mendelssohn wrote the piece as a gift to his teacher, Eduard Ritz. He always remembered it with delight and cherished it throughout his short life.

Featured in the record as well, Georges Enesco (or Enescu) was also a precocious artist. Enesco joined the Conservatoire de Paris at age 14 as a composer, violinist, and pianist. He was just slightly older than Mendelssohn (19 years-old) when he composed his own Octet for strings in 1900. In this piece, for the first time, he progressively renounced his romantic influences and gave shape to his own language. If Mendelssohn’s work relied mostly on melody, that of young Enesco’s is built around a skillful counterpoint, moving forward with softness and determination. Commenting on the piece years later, Enesco wrote: “An engineer launching his first suspension bridge over a river, could not feel more anxiety than I felt when I set out to darken my paper”. © François Hudry/Qobuz