Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 "Scottish" in A Minor, op. 56 (part 1)

[JayCNelson]

0:29 those two must be mother and daughter or something

[ViolaClarinetti158]

One of the more beautiful and charming pieces of classical music :)

[tyronemick1]

@calogria my lecturer just used your comment as a reference to what people think of Mendelssohn. Well done :P

[ralman20154]

reading people argue about classical music is pretty entertaining.

[nickmaestro]

Just my personal opinion, Mendelssohn 3 Scottish is superior to Mendelssohn 4 Italian. That opening chorale in 3 gives me the chills. And the exposition is so moving. Mendelssohn 4 is no doubt an excellent work, but Mendelssohn 3 I feel is a much more emotional. Mendelssohn is one of the top underrated/overshadowed works of music.

[nvsmp]

@nickmaestro I think the same, this symphony is really passionate, beautiful and awesome, the fourth is incredible, but this express more feelings in my opinion.

[gamerfreak5665]

wow, they're using natural horns!

[16mmDJ]

@gamerfreak5665 Sure, they're using natural horns. My high school's orchestra is playing this, and first semester we have a shortage of trombones, so I've been made to play the horn IV part... on a bass trombone. There are some crazy high notes in there.

[JayCNelson]

@gamerfreak5665 of course, it's the OAE. They even use strings made from animal fat and all that. Proper authentic stuff

[JayCNelson]

@gamerfreak5665 AND wooden flutes!

[CeciliaLucretiaBadea]

The Scottish Symphony is Mendelssohn's masterpiece.

[Elsenrail29]

Mendelssohn is perhaps best described as an amalgam of Art Tatum's unfathomable memorizing and performing skill (read the story where Mendelssohn replayed a new composition of Liszt he just heard shocked Liszt similar to one where Art Tatum baffled Horowitz.) and the composing skill of Beethoven or Tchaikovsy.

[shnimmuc]

@Elsenrail29 The violin concerto is a great work. The symphonies you mentioned are B at best. They did not forward the progression of symphonic thought and are poorly orchestrated for the time in which they were written. These are not my opinions alone, I have great company in many music historians. If you compare Mendelsshon`s oratorios to Handel`s they are pale. Handel says more in 5 minutes the Mendelsshon does in and hour. And this is backed up by anyone that knows the Handel works.

[Elsenrail29]

@shnimmuc Interesting... Can you please ''RATE'' the following symphonies for me to have an idea:

Brahms 1st and 3rd, 4th, Beethoven 7th, Rachmaninoff 3rd, Tchaikovsky 4th, Schubert 9th, Schumann 4th.

I wonder ''who'' uses what criteria to rate the symphonies. By the way I listened tens of Haendel's music while they are very touching they are too repetetive for me. And what you meant with ''forward the progression''? Is shostakovich 5th more advanced than Beethoven 5th?

[shnimmuc]

@Elsenrail29 Shostakovich`s 5th is more modern then Beethoven`s 7th but not for the time it was written. As for the other works you mentioned they were all relatively progressive for their time. Mendelsshon`s were not. Mendelsshon was too involved with Bach and Handel to fully develop as a composer. Artist must be careful not to immerse the art in others. Debussy loved Wagner, but to get away from the influence rebuked him.

[Elsenrail29]

@shnimmuc Surely it is more modern because the latter is composed 129 years later. People who study music (or art in general) often fail to understand that the main aim of music is to invoke positive feeling in human beings. F.e. while the gaspard de la nuit or Islamey are infinitely harder and more ''advanced'' then chopin's nocturne in C Sharp or waltz 64/2 99% of the people will like Chopin better. It is not because they do not understand Islamey but because they like Chopin more.

[Elsenrail29]

@shnimmuc ''Mendelssohn’s latter works are not nearly as experimental or progressively minded as the earlier works.'' quote from an article of John Gibbons. You are of course right about Mendelssohn not being progressive in his later years. but that does not mean that the symphonies 3 & 4 are B list. It not automobile industry it is art. The music may have reached its climax of all times during 19th century. You cannot say it's developed since later 19th century.

[julienbencze]

Mendelssohn had just a different way of conceiving and experiencing romantism in music.

He was a pure genius that liked indeed the music of the past and a certain social conservatism, he had 4 full-time jobs in the same time, all these sometimes prevented him from composing "new" sounds, it is true, but his music was still innovative and he definitly was a romantic composer (what would have this music become if he had lived until the late 1880's?)

[julienbencze]

His very popular Songs Without Words, if not innovative, are unique to me because they express passionate but sincerely shared love and feelings with extreme sensuality (not to be found in any other composer, or maybe Schumann), and not love or feeling based on the individual point of view (like in Chopin, Liszt or Wagner).

[julienbencze]

@shnimmuc M.'s concertos showed the way to Schuman, Grieg's or Rachmaninov later masterpieces. He wrote other interesting piano pieces, some of them completly anachronic, i.e. the scherzo from 1827 that sounds like a XXth century Gerschwinian work, or some of his op. 104 etudes that sound almost jazzy.

[julienbencze]

@shnimmuc For the piano, if Mendelssohn's work is not to be compared with Chopin or Liszt's unique contribution, he still emancipated the instrument from the accompanying classical orchestration, by composing the first, real romantic piano concertos (n°1 partly, but more clearly n°2 and 3), these were really innovative in all aspects, if you hear the previous references in that register, Beethoven's concertos, the breaking point is huge.

[julienbencze]

@shnimmuc If you listen to the Hebrides ouverture from 1830, it's like you were listining to a late 19th C. work. With his orchestral melodies, harmonics and arrangements, M. immensily inspired Wagner, the latter sometimes almost plagiarizing (Hebrides, Fair Melusine ouvertures, Walpurgisnacht, Reformation symphony...), but alsoTchaïkowsky (violin concerto, Scottish symphony...), or Grieg (Midsummernight's Dream...).

[julienbencze]

@shnimmuc To me, these critics are just wrong. Looking at the history of music, it is obvious that M. is the one, with Berlioz and its Symphonie fantastique, that gave the symphonic music the impulsion that would definitly put the classical harmonics and arrangements behind in the first half of the 19th century. He is the one that romanticized the baroque harmonics with expressive and powerful orchestration, showing the way to Brahms and the late 19th century Scandinavian and Russian composers.

[julienbencze]

@shnimmuc We have a divergent view on Mendelssohn's music. My comments will be long, sorry, but I would like to contribute to puting into question what I see as an irrelevant appreciation of M.'s music among many amateur or professional critics, showing him as a second rate composer that only composed old music from the past to please the rich people, who was gifted but unable to "understand" the "real" signification of romantism...

[shnimmuc]

@julienbencze I stand by what I have said. I appreciate your position, but to me it does not stand up when one carefully looks at the music itself. The scotch Symphony, while being entertaining is light years away from the astonishing music of Beethoven`s Ninth, or for that matter, Schubert`s Ninth. It is cut from a very "common cloth" as compared with those works. The storm section of the Scotch Symphony is childish when compared to Beethoven`s Pastoral. For me it is "B" art.

[julienbencze]

@shnimmuc It is just a matter of taste! To me Mendelssohn's symhonies are just more... romantic than those of Beethoven or Schubert, and I adore Beethoven! To me the greatest symphonies are not Schubert's nor Beethoven's, but Tchaikowsky's 6th or Mahler's 3rd or 5th, or Dvorak New World symphony. Just a matter of taste...

[calogria]

@shnimmuc You judge Mendelssohn's music as B-art, yet you don't even take the trouble of spelling his name correctly. You may have a couple of music historians on your side, but don't forget that Mendelssohn was held in high esteem by Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and numerous great conductors past and present. He may not have been a progressive like Beethoven or Wagner, but nevertheless a genius in his own right. Romantic music would be so much poorer without him.

[ellisfd1]

not usually one for Classical music but after hearing this and knowing that my country inspired it i will now

[TheProphetEliza]

I love this!!

[windstorm1000]

my gosh, those are natural horns!! any hornists out there--are N. Horns difficult to play compared to modersn?

[windstorm1000]

That beginning ascending tune in the strings is so haunting. During his famous visit to Scotland, Mendelssohn wrote down a theme of what came to him in the ruins of Holyrood House. You can almost hear Mary Queen of Scots dictating musically her tragic life to M.--you can hear it in the music. I also love the variation of the cellos going up at 2:00--never fails to bring chills up my spine. And the thrilling/tragic rest. M. caught the tragedy & the splendour of Scotland here...pure genuis. 

[dcco76]

@windstorm1000 I love how the 4th movement brings in a German theme near the end

[VnArgonaise]

Amazing sound detail!! Sounds from each instruments are clear and sharp. It seems to be half key gone down, and it added more "darkness" over the original. It feels like more "scottish" to me. I loved it so much!

[shnimmuc]

Mendelsshon was, except for a few works a B list composer. His greatest works stem from his youth, he simply never developed. He is dwarfed by Schumann

[jeffrudzinski]

@shnimmuc If Mendelssohn was a B list composer, where does that put you?

[jawnps]

@shnimmuc Really Dwarfed by Schumann? I would really disagree. Schumann doesn't seem to have as much heart as Mendelssohn. If you're talking about technical aspects of music, I cannot argue as I know nothing about it.

[roman1akid]

@jawnps Not so. Witness the his slow movements- his third symphony, the cantabile from the piano trio. So much sensibility.

[Elsenrail29]

@shnimmuc If you mean Beethoven Mozart and Bach as ''A List'' composer which make Mendelssohn ''B List'' then I would say those three are musical demigods who cannot be categorized under any list. Yet not even they do not ''dwarf'' Mendelssohn, let alone Schumann. Mendelssohn is greater/on par with ANY composer (not to mention he is the one of the most talented performer of all time) other then those Great 3. To me the violin concerto and symp. 3 &4 are most beautiful of their kind.

[johnnyecho]

a ridiculous costume he's wearing though... haha

[AustinShowen]

I love this orchestra and Sir Roger Norrington! Fabulous playing on period instruments! Mendelssohn has never sounded this good!

[pyrioni]

poor flute, keys weren't developed yet. :(

[roman1akid]

@pyrioni :(

[intelectus1]

bello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[carlosgarciaamigo]

Fabuloso!!