Mendelssohn: Works For Cello & Piano Muller-schott

Daniel Müller-Schott: cello; Jonathan Gilad: piano

Felix Mendelssohn: Variations concertantes D-Dur op. 17 / Sonate Nr. 1 B-Dur op. 45 / Auf Flügeln des Gesanges op. 34/2 / Schilflied op. 71/4 / Assai tranquillo / Lied ohne Worte D-Dur op. 109 / Sonate Nr. 2 D-Dur op. 58

Chamber music is an intimate genre, that we know. But in the case of Felix Mendelssohn’s cello works, it was also family-inspired. For his younger brother Paul was obviously a good cellist, and it was to him that Felix dedicated his two cello sonatas and his Variations concertantes op. 17. Daniel-Müller-Schott presents all three works here, accompanied by Jonathan Gilad at the piano. The playful virtuosity of the Variations, modelled after Mozart and Beethoven, inspires the duo to equally virtuosic brilliance, be it in the passionate eruptions in the seventh variation or the superb, subtle coda as it fades away. The First Cello Sonata is also light and airy, and the Müller Schott/Gilad duo savour to the full its prevailingly cheerful, merry mood. The grace and passion that Mendelssohn’s contemporaries already admired in him are here to be found throughout. In the Second Sonata, we find the most beautiful melodicism alongside moments of drama and sound colours that seem not so far removed from the world of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Müller-Schott and Gilad here pull out all the stops. We also offer two shorter works for the same instruments: an “Assai tranquillo” in b minor and a “Song without words” in D major op. 109 that is graceful in its outer sections, more agitated in the middle. These here frame two song arrangements by Daniel Müller-Schott that are wholly Mendelssohnian in style: “On the wings of song” and “Schilflied” – two works whose rather melancholic, cantabile melodic lines “sing” beautifully even without the words of Heine or Lenau (perhaps even more so without them), especially in Müller-Schott’s superb, moving interpretation, not least when accompanied by a congenial partner such as Jonathan Gilad.