Felix Mendelssohn: Sonata For Violin And Piano

SKU: BR.SON-454

ISBN 9790004803646. 9 x 12 inches.

The Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64, and the Sonata in F minor, op. 4, are the only works for solo violin that Mendelssohn had had printed during his lifetime. However, his complete oeuvre includes other completed or fragmentary compositions, including two further concertos and several unfinished sonatas and other individual pieces. He himself had an extraordinary command of the violin and entrusted the instrument in several other works, such as the Octet op. 20 or the concert aria Infelice! - Ah, ritorno, eta dell'oro, with special tasks. Nevertheless, with regard to details of playing technique, he usually sought advice from solo violinist friends, first from Eduard Ritz, then, after Ritz's early death, from Ferdinand David. The present volume contains all of the completed and fragmentary compositions for violin and piano that have survived - from the early Prelude and Fugue in D and G minor from Zelter's practice book (1820), which can be assigned without doubt, through to the Sonata in F major (1838) in their various versions.

SKU: BR.SON-433

ISBN 9790004802892. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's violin concerto op. 64 had - like many of his other works - a lengthy genesis: it is in the summer of 1838 that surviving documents first mention the promise made to his friend Ferdinand David, concert master of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, to write, besides a sonata, a grand solo concerto for him. Ultimately, work on this opus continued - with some longer interruptions - until September 1844. Even then, it owed its preliminary completion in no small measure to the constant urging of the prospective solo violinist. But after the ,,official handing-over of the parts to David and a first joint rehearsal of the concert in Leipzig Mendelssohn continued working on the score. There subsequently began an intensive correspondence with David between Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main, where Mendelssohn resided with his family, in particular concerning issues of the principal part and the reworking of the solo cadence. In March 1845 the then current version of the work was premiered in a subscribers' concert in Leipzig.This volume deals with Mendelssohn's first complete manuscript of the score with the corrections contained therein, including all surviving drafts and sketches; also included is the epistolary evidence of the correspondence with Ferdinand David prior to the premiere. The further developments up to the printing of the main version of op. 64 by Breitkopf & Hartel are dealt with in Series II, Vol. 7 of the edition.