Mendelssohn- String Quartet Op.12, String Quintet No.1, Minuetto

This hybrid SACD of chamber music by Mendelssohn features compositions from the composer's youth. In these works, glittering echoes of A Midsummer Night's Dream are deftly blended with avant-garde declamations reminiscent of the recently-deceased Beethoven. The works featured here aptly demonstrate the precocious genius of a musician described by Schumann as 'The Mozart of the 19th century ... he is the brightest composer of the age and he comprehends, with finest humor, the contradictions of our time more clearly than anyone, so that he is the first to reconcile them.'