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Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, more commonly known as Felix Mendelssohn , born February 3, 1809 in Hamburg and died November 4, 1847 in Leipzig, is a conductor, pianist and German composer of the beginning of the romantic period. He is the grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, the son of Abraham, a banker, and the brother of Fanny Mendelssohn, composer.

After early successes in Germany, he travels throughout Europe and is particularly well received in Britain, where, during his ten visits, are created several of his major works. A contemporary of Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz, he left a very fruitful work for his short life of 38 years (symphonies, concerti, oratorios, openings, works for solo piano, chamber music ...). His current notoriety, however, rests on only a few of his greatest masterpieces: The Dream of a Summer Night, his Overture "The Hebrides", his "Italian" and "Scottish" Symphonies, his Oratorios "Paulus" and "Elias", his second Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64, his String Octet and his Trio No. 1 in D minor, op. 49.

He participated in the rediscovery of Baroque music and especially Johann Sebastian Bach and Georges-Frédéric Haendel. He is one of the first composers of his time to renew the art of counterpoint, which is sometimes worth considering as "the romantic classic". After a long period of relative denigration due to the evolution of musical tastes, the antisemitism of the XIX century and the XX > Century and the ban by the Nazis to play his music, he is rediscovered nowadays and considered a major composer of the romantic era.

After the first performance of the Scottish, he is considered by Wagner, often very hard with him, as a "first class landscape">.

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