Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto was one of the first violin concerti I bought on CD (way back when I was in high school). I think the others I ordered from Templar Records in London were the Brahms Violin Concerto (Anne-Sophie Mutter) and the Beethoven Violin Concerto (Itzhak Perlman). I bought this EuroArts DVD from Presto Classical last year when it was half price and I was watching it tonight in preparation for the SSO concert on Saturday, January 19.  Frank-Michael Erben, the concert master of the Gewandhaus Orchestra is the soloist.  Interestingly, the first soloist of the concerto was Ferdinand David, then the concert master of the Gewandhaus Orchestra during Mendelssohn's time.

My first CD of this concerto was with Uto Ughi and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre.

When I first got this CD from Templar Records in London, I just listened to the Mendelssohn concerto and ignored the Bruch.  Of course, when I actually finally got around to listening to Bruch's first violin concerto, I was entranced and it is, to me, the most beautiful of all violin concertos!

Anyways, it is good to be able to hear the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto live played by the Gewandhaus Orchestra's concert master.  It is, after all, a very listenable masterpiece!  Mendelssohn was even more precocious than Mozart as a prodigy.  I've heard the Brahms Violin Concerto played by Miriam Fried and the Calgary Philharmonic back in the 1980s as well as with Itzhak Perlman and the TSO back in 1998 (during Easter break!).  Pinchas Zukerman was conducting the TSO that evening and the Mendelssohn Reformation Symphony was on the second half of the program.