For the Love of Mendelssohn
CONSONE QUARTET BBT Fellowship 2022
Mendelssohn
String Quartet in E flat major ‘1823’
String Quartet in E flat major, Op. 44 No 3
Linn CKD 716 Release date: 24 March 2023
This album is the first volume in a series of Mendelssohn’s complete string quartets and marks the beginning of a recording partnership with Linn Records. It also signals a deep love of Mendelssohn’s music which the Consones have been playing since they first came together. The Quartet plays on gut strings to create a warm, velvety soundworld and has drawn on inspiration from editions of the time to present fresh accounts of these works, one from the composer’s early life and the second his penultimate work in the genre. Their research includes scrupulously annotated parts that belonged to violinist Ferdinand David of the Gewandhaus Quartet which premiered many of Mendelssohn’s quartets.
The Consone Quartet, also a BBC New Generation Artist, appears in recital at Wigmore Hall on 12 March with a programme that includes Mendelssohn’s Quartet Op. 44 No. 3 along with Haydn’s string Quartet in E flat Op. 33 No. 2 ‘The Joke’.