Pianist Howard Shelley's cycle of Felix Mendelssohn's piano music has been broadly welcomed and commercially successful, no surprise in that this music has been in need of a reevaluation. Even this, the last item in the set, has sold well. The album collects mostly late works of Mendelssohn or works published after his death. There are a few unclassifiable miscellaneous works, but generally, the music here is as worthwhile as on any other volume, with two books of the Lieder ohne Worte ("Songs Without Words"), the Piano ...
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Pianist Howard Shelley's cycle of Felix Mendelssohn's piano music has been broadly welcomed and commercially successful, no surprise in that this music has been in need of a reevaluation. Even this, the last item in the set, has sold well. The album collects mostly late works of Mendelssohn or works published after his death. There are a few unclassifiable miscellaneous works, but generally, the music here is as worthwhile as on any other volume, with two books of the Lieder ohne Worte ("Songs Without Words"), the Piano Sonata No. 3 in B flat major, Op. 106, and an intriguing Prelude and Fugue pair. Shelley is excellent in the Songs Without Words, which are not as exciting as Schumann or Chopin but do not try to be. They are flawlessly balanced short pieces in which, as the name suggests, the top line consists of a songlike melody whose implications and turns are as subtle as Brahms. Shelley's readings are crystalline. He is precise without being in the least mechanical, and each little piece is fully...
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