Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn was a creative prodigy without equal. By his mid-teens he was composing startlingly original masterworks that combine Classical elegance and poise with Romantic fantasy. Born in Hamburg in 1809 and raised by an enlightened family that nurtured his polymathic genius, he was viewed by his admiring public as the natural heir of Mozart. Accordingly, his breakthrough teenage masterpieces—the String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (1825) and Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21 (1826)—possess a lightness of touch, melodic charm, excited forward momentum and formal clarity that characterise the remainder of his output. Mendelssohn’s genius for orchestral colour and precision is at its most potent in the windswept seascapes of the Hebrides Overture, Op. 26 (1830) and gentle reminiscences of his “Scottish” Symphony in A minor, Op. 46 (1842), while his scintillating virtuoso flair is typified by the Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 (1844). The composer also somehow found time to run the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, kickstart the rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach with an 1829 Berlin performance of the St Matthew Passion and thoroughly rejuvenate British musical culture. Exhausted by his whirlwind lifestyle, and deeply affected by the death of his gifted composer sister Fanny (1805-47), Mendelssohn died in 1847 at just 38.