A German composer, conductor and pianist who helped revive interest in J. S. Bach's music.
Felix Mendelssohn was a prodigy of a rare kind — a gifted composer, pianist and conductor who came from a cultured, prosperous Berlin family and was mature as an artist while still a teenager. In 1829, at twenty, he conducted a revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion that helped bring Bach’s music back into the wider repertoire, a debt every later pianist owes him. He remained one of the most admired musicians in Europe until his early death at thirty-eight.
Mendelssohn’s most beloved contribution to the piano is the Songs Without Words — eight small books of short lyrical pieces, each a wordless “song” for the keyboard. The idea is exactly what it sounds like: a singing melody over an accompaniment, written to be played at home rather than in the concert hall. His style is elegant and fluent, Romantic in feeling but Classical in its clean proportions.
That collection is also a gift to learners, because the pieces vary widely in difficulty. Several — the gentle Venetian Gondola Songs among them — are within reach of an intermediate player, while others demand real polish. It is a repertoire a pianist can grow inside for years.