Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 - 1847)

Piano Music Vol. 2
Variations sérieuses in D Minor, Op. 54
Kinderstücke, Op. 72 ('Christmas Pieces')
Gondellied in A Major ('Barcarole')
Scherzo in B Minor
Sonata in E Major, Op. 6

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809, son of the banker Abraham Mendelssohn and grandson of the great Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, the epitome of tolerance in a generally intolerant world. In 1812 the family moved to Berlin after the French occupation of Hamburg and it was there that Mendelssohn received his education, in music as a pupil of Carl Zelter, for whom the boy seemed a second Mozart. As a child he was charming and precocious, profiting from the wide cultural interests of his parents and relations, excelling as a pianist and busy with composition after composition. In 1816 he was baptized a Christian, a step that his father took six years later, ac