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Immaculate performances of some of Mendelssohn's lesser-known but most interesting works. Classic FM Drive Featured Album, 23 June 2014.
Pianist Howard Shelley is one of the great interpreters early Romantic piano music and here he presents the second of a six-volume set of Mendelssohn's complete solo piano music, perhaps the least well-known part of the composer's repertoire.
There's the virtuoso concert piece Rondo capriccioso; the three-movement Fantasia in F sharp minor, originally described as a 'Scottish sonata', with its folk-song elements in the first movement; and two books of Songs without Words.
The first volume of the collection won high praise for was praised for Shelley's immaculate, precise and warm playing - and the standard continues here. Music that's well worth discovering, performed to the very highest standard.