MENDELSSOHN - Three works for Cello and Piano

Among my favorite chamber works are three Mendelssohn wrote for Cello and Piano when he was about 30: Sonata #1 Op. 45; Sonata #2 Op. 58; and Song Without Words Op. 109. One of the best recordings of these works is on a budget priced Naxos CD featuring Maria Kliegel, who is allegedly the best living  cellist according to the famous cellist Mstislav Rostopovich (who ought to know.)

If you want to try Mendelssohn's other few pieces for Cello and Piano they can be found  by Dolin and Blaha here. There is also a nice recording of Sonata #2 by Munroe and Feldman here.

For record collectors there are silky vinyl recordings of these pieces in the three volume 9 record "Vox Box" set series that contains all Mendelssohn's chamber music. (Schuster cello, and Balsam Piano). For vinyl Chamber music in general you can't go wrong with Everest or Vox especially their boxed sets.

If you like these three pieces you will also probably like Mendelssohn's Octet elsewhere on this blog.

If you want to see how far we have regressed culturally, read a biography of Felix Mendelssohn and his family it will change your ideas of what humans are capable of.

To listen to this kind of music you need to sit quietly undisturbed and calmly listen until your mind leaves your body and floats away elsewhere. Listening to this kind of music helps you stop becoming a nuisance to yourself and others.

If I had to go to a desert island and could only take a handful of CD's I would take this one. [Actually this is rather dated because since I wrote it it has developed that I can fit basically the entire canon of western classical music on an iPhone, if you have  one with lots of memory]. So these days I would say that I would take this to a desert island along with a solar charger for my iPhone.