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About
This is the third recording in our Mendelssohn in Birmingham series, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its Principal Guest Conductor, Edward Gardner. The album features Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt) and Symphony No. 2, completing our survey of Mendelssohn’s mature symphonies.
Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage is the second in a trilogy of concert overtures by Mendelssohn, the two others being A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Hebrides, the latter recorded on Vol. 1 in this Chandos series. Based on two poems by Goethe these sonorous images describe a ship helplessly becalmed in the open sea, then carried by rising winds towards land. The densely textured, immensely slow opening evocation of oceanic calm and the following quickening full-orchestral crescendo strikingly depict Goethe’s verses.
Symphony No. 2 was valued as one of Mendelssohn’s greatest and most influential achievement for much of the nineteenth century – not least in Britain – but it has since come to be viewed equivocally. A fusion of neo-baroque procedures with romantic sentiment provides the backdrop of this hybrid Symphony-Cantata, made up of three orchestral movements and a choral finale, in which smooth contrapuntal arias contrast with exuberant, dramatic choral sections. The soloists are all emerging young artists in Britain, the wonderfully talented soprano sisters Mary and Sophie Bevan and the tenor Benjamin Hulett.
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Reviews
“… Gardner and his singers locate the nobility in the music’s odd mish-mash of baroque and romantic elements, and let it speak without excess drama. The two sopranos and tenor mesh convincingly and the final chorus is genuinely moving…” ****
Brian Morton – Choir & Organ magazine – July/August 2015
"... Edward Gardner has a special understanding of Mendelssohn; his approach both to this Symphony and the Overture is sympathetic and very perceptive."
Antony Hodgson - ClassicalSource.com - July 2015
**** (Excellent Album)
Giuseppe Rossi – Musica magazine (Italy) – June 2015
“… both the orchestra and chorus are superb here – and beautifully recorded. Soloists are fine …”
Donald Vroon – American Record Guide – May/June 2015
***** (Superb album)
Jérône Bastianelli - Diapason magazine (France) - May 2015
“… exquisite solo singing from the sopranos Sophie and Mary Bevan and the tenor Benjamin Hulett in the finale to Mendelssohn’s homage to Beethoven’s Choral Symphony.”
Hugh Canning – The Sunday Times (Culture magazine) – 5 April 2015
Recording of the Month
"The whole disc is a rare pleasure; spoil yourself."
Gwyn Parry-Jones - MusicWeb-International.com - 27 February 2015
" Gardner conjures up something akin to a serenely unruffled Turner seascape coaxing a sonorous luminosity from the splendid CBSO strings Indeed, the radiance and natural perspectives of Chandos’s engineering capture the stasis of the passage in a way that’s utterly mesmerizing in its effect, abetted in part by the warm acoustics of Birmingham Town Hall This is in very sense an unreservedly absorbing account, exceptionally well played and directed with admirable facility and understanding by Gardner. I’d go as far as to say that I’d happily pay he price of this new SACD just to acquire this unusually touching and masterful performance of Meeresstille und glückliche Fährt ..."
Michael Jameson - International Record Review - March 2015
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