2009 Being Mendelssohn: Disc 2 Choose Quantity

× Disc II features two quintessential works from Mendelssohn’s oeuvre. Mendelssohn’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream endures among the composer’s most beloved creations; the Octet, composed when Mendelssohn was only sixteen years old, testifies to the miraculous precocity of the young prodigy. In between these comes the Opus 18 Number 6 String Quartet by Beethoven, who served as one of Mendelssohn’s lifelong artistic models. Beethoven’s groundbreaking Opus 18 quartets, with which the young firebrand from Bonn first announced himself to Vienna’s musical community, pushed the boundaries of Classicism and predicted the Romantic age.