Mendelssohn: Songs without words, Vol. 2 Peter Donohoe

• Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847): 17 Variations sérieuses in D Minor, Op. 54, MWV U 156:
• 1 Mendelssohn: 17 Variations sérieuses in D Minor, Op. 54, MWV U 156 11:26
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38:
• 2 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38: No. 3 in E Major, MWV U 107 02:31
• 3 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38: No. 4 in A Major, MWV U 120 01:53
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 19b:
• 4 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 19b: No. 5 in F-Sharp Minor / Major, MWV U 90 03:29
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30:
• 5 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30: No. 5 in D Major, MWV U 97 01:56
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 53:
• 6 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 53: No. 6 in A Major, MWV U 154 02:51
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30:
• 7 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30: No. 6 in F-Sharp Minor, MWV U 110 "Venetian Gondola Song" 02:56
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 102:
• 8 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 102: No. 5 in A Major, MWV U 194 "Piece for Children" 01:17
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85:
• 9 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85: No. 4 in D Major, MWV U 190 02:37
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 102:
• 10 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 102: No. 4 in G Minor, MWV U 152 02:00
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85:
• 11 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85: No. 6 in B-Flat Major, MWV U 155 01:54
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 53:
• 12 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 53: No. 1 in A-Flat Major, MWV U 143 03:18
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30:
• 13 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30: No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, MWV U 77 02:15
• 14 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 30: No. 1 in E-Flat Major, MWV U 103 04:10
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 53:
• 15 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 53: No. 3 in G Minor, MWV U 144 "Gondola Song" 02:55
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85:
• 16 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85: No. 3 in E-Flat Major, MWV U 111 02:23
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 19b:
• 17 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 19b: No. 6 in G Minor, MWV U 78 "Venetian Gondola Song" 02:17
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38:
• 18 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38: No. 1 in E-Flat Major, MWV U 121 02:35
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 62:
• 19 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 62: No. 2 in B-Flat Major, MWV U 181 01:53
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85:
• 20 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85: No.1 in F Major, MWV U 150 02:36
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 102:
• 21 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 102: No. 3 in C Major, MWV U 195 "Piece for Children" 01:23
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85:
• 22 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85: No. 2 in A Minor, MWV U 101 01:06
• 23 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 85: No. 5 in A Major, MWV U 191 02:19
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38:
• 24 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 38: No. 5 in A Minor, MWV U 137 02:32
• Lied ohne Worte, Op. 67:
• 25 Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte, Op. 67: No. 6 in E Major, MWV U 188 02:16
• Phantasie in B-Flat Major, Op. 15, MWV U 74 on an Irish Song "The Last Rose of Summer":
• 26 Mendelssohn: Phantasie in B-Flat Major, Op. 15, MWV U 74 on an Irish Song "The Last Rose of Summer" 07:51
• Scherzo from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in B Flat Major, Op. 61, MWV M 13:
• 27 Mendelssohn: Scherzo from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in B Flat Major, Op. 61, MWV M 13 04:39
• Total Runtime 01:21:18

Info for Mendelssohn: Songs without words, Vol. 2

Lieder ohne Worte – Songs without Words – seems to be a description invented by Mendelssohn himself for these short, lyrical and descriptive piano pieces which he composed so prolifically. Indeed, it is arguable that these works define his pianistic output in the same way that the Mazurka defines Chopin’s. Publishing them in sets of six, Mendelssohn composed Lieder ohne Worte throughout his career – they proved a type of composition to which he had a lifetime attraction.

For the first volume, rather than approaching them chronologically or as complete sets, Peter Donohoe selected pieces to build a satisfying programme. Here he does the same with all the pieces that remain. In addition, the album features three free-standing significant works. The 17 Variations sérieuses, from 1841, is one of Mendelssohn’s largest solo piano works, and was published in an album to raise funds for a monument to Beethoven. The Phantasie on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ is a much earlier work, based on the Irish folk melody that – with added words by the Irish poet Thomas Moore – took Europe by storm in the early 1800s. The album concludes with Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Peter Donohoe, piano

Peter Donohoe
In the years since his unprecedented success as Silver Medal winner of the 1982 7th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Peter Donohoe has built an extraordinary world-wide career, encompassing a huge repertoire and over forty years’ experience as a pianist, as well as continually exploring many other avenues in music-making. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time, for his musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.

During recent seasons Peter Donohoe’s performances included appearances with the Dresden Staatskapelle with Myung-Whun Chung, Gothenburg Symphony with Gustavo Dudamel and Gurzenich Orchestra with Ludovic Morlot. He also performed with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and played both Brahms Concertos with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Last season his engagements included appearances with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestras and an extensive tour o South America. He also took part in a major Messiaen Festival in the Spanish city of Cuenca, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Peter Donohoe played with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Sir Simon Rattle’s opening concerts as Music Director. He has also recently performed with all the major London Orchestras, Royal Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, Swedish Radio, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Vienna Symphony and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras. He was an annual visitor to the BBC Proms for seventeen years and has appeared at many other festivals including six consecutive visits as resident artist to the Edinburgh Festival, eleven highly acclaimed appearances at the Bath International Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, and at the Ruhr and Schleswig Holstein Festivals in Germany. In the United States, his appearances have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit Symphony Orchestras. Since 1984 he has visited all the major Australian Orchestras many times, and since 1989 he has made several major tours of New Zealand with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He has recently returned from a highly acclaimed tour of Argentina with the National Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.

He has worked with many of the worlds’ greatest conductors including Christoph Eschenbach, Neeme Jarvi, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Andrew Davis and Yevgeny Svetlanov. More recently he has appeared as soloist with the next generation of excellent conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Robin Ticciati and Daniel Harding.

He is a keen chamber musician and performs frequently with the pianist Martin Roscoe. They have given performances in London and at the Edinburgh Festival and have recorded discs of Gershwin and Rachmaninov. Other musical partners have included the Maggini Quartet, with whom he has made recordings of several great British chamber works.

In 2001 Naxos released a disc of music by Gerald Finzi, with Peter Donohoe as soloist, the first of a major series of recordings which aims to raise the public's awareness of British piano concerto repertoire through concert performance and recordings. Discs of music by Alan Rawsthorne, Sir Arthur Bliss, Christian Darnton, Alec Rowley, Howard Ferguson, Roberta Gerhard, Kenneth Alwyn, Thomas Pitfield, John Gardner and Hamilton Harty have since been released to great critical acclaim.

Peter Donohoe has made many fine recordings on EMI Records, which have won awards including the Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt for his recording of the Liszt Sonata in B minor and the Gramophone Concerto award for the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no. 2. His recordings of Messiaen with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble for Chandos Records and Litolff for Hyperion have also received widespread acclaim. His recording of Brahms’ 1st Concerto with Svetlanov and the Philharmonia Orchestra was voted best available recording by the US magazine Stereo Review.

He studied at Chetham’s School of Music for seven years, graduated in music at Leeds University, where he studied composition with Alexander Goehr, and the Royal Northern College of Music, studying piano with Derek Wyndham. He then went on to study in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. His prize-winning performances at the British Liszt Competition in London in 1976, the Bartok-Liszt Piano Competition in Budapest in the same year, and the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1981 helped build a major career in the UK and Europe. Then his activity in the competitive world culminated in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1982, which shot his name into world-wide prominence. In June 2011 he returned to Moscow as a jury member for the 14th International Tchaikovsky Competition.

He is vice-president of the Birmingham Conservatoire and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates of Music from the Universities of Birmingham, Central England, Warwick, East Anglia, Leicester and The Open University.

Peter Donohoe was awarded a C.B.E. for services to music in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List.

Booklet for Mendelssohn: Songs without words, Vol. 2