Word: mendelssohn
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...that, he was evidently a likable, unpretentious man of the world, gifted in languages, poetry and science, a fit partner for any woman on the dance floor, and any man's match in the billiard room. Who was the man? Why, Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy...
...Mendelssohn grew up in Berlin, but that city was not always kind to him. Because he was born a Jew, the Nazis did their best to expunge his name, and his elegant, sweet, highly uncontroversial works, from Germany between 1933 and 1945. What happened thereafter was odd if not downright shameful. Mendelssohn's name remained forgotten in postwar Germany, his music rarely played. Even his grave, in the Mendelssohn family plot, was all but lost amidst the rubble and weeds in Berlin's Holy Trinity Cemetery...
...Army sergeant hunted it up, and cleared away the mess. Since then Mendelssohn's grave has become a musical shrine. Today Berliners, East and West alike, are enjoying a month-long festival of the composer's music to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Mendelssohn's death in 1847 at age 38. Herbert von Karajan led the Berlin Philharmonic down the high-flavored paths of the Scotch Symphony. The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin gave the first major performance in 149 years of Mendelssohn's early (but mature) String Symphony No. 10. Even his mammoth oratorios were...
...story of Mendelssohn's life and works is a rare case history of the cheerful, the fruitful and industrious cultivation of genius. He was born in 1809* of a remarkable family. His grandfather was the great, hunchbacked philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, often called the "modern Plato," and the undisputed intellectual leader of German Jewry in the Age of Enlightenment. Felix's father Abraham was a well-to-do banker who regularly rousted his children out of bed at 5 each morning for study and work, recognized their musical talents early, had them baptized, and ran a household that regularly...
...morning, Felix presided over a musical program at home-as conductor, pianist and master of ceremonies. He was also composer. Several of his operas, a dozen or so string symphonies, numerous concertos and cantatas were among the works thus premièred. Before he left knee breeches, in fact, Mendelssohn was a thoroughgoing musical...