Felix Mendelssohn: Mendelssohn Octet und Quartet

• Octet

From the Merel Quartet‘s inception, the music of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy has played an important role in our repertoire. We find it fascinating how he achieves his own musical language in his string quartet writing, even in his earliest works in that genre. Clearly he is influenced by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, nevertheless, from the very first measures of his quartet Op 12 it is his own voice, his own unique sound which we hear. You simply have to love this music: the freshness, the intelligence, the enthusiasm which is especially infectious in these works; the high virtuosity of the Scherzi – witty, light, mysterious, elfin, similar to his music for “A Midsummer Night‘s Dream“; the lyricism – often we have the feeling that even in his chamber music he has written songs without words; and finally the codas - I don‘t know of anything more intoxicating than the end of the octet‘s first movement, or when, in the Finale of Op 12, he returns to material from the first movement, closing the circle and coming to rest – wonderful!