Mendelssohn Complete Works for Cello and Piano

Mendelssohn wrote relatively little for cello and piano; today the whole of his output in this genre fits neatly onto one CD.  This release on period instruments is an especially engaging musical conversation.  In Mendelssohn’s time, the modern piano was still far in the future, and the fortepianos he played were less likely to drown out the cello.  Here, Viviana Sofronitsky plays a copy of an 1819 Conrad Graf fortepiano, which blends beautifully with Sergei Istomin’s 18th-century Leopold Widhalm cello.

Sofronitsky, whose father was the Russian virtuoso Vladimir Sofronitsky and whose mother was the eldest daughter of the composer Alexander Scriabin, specializes in playing early keyboard instruments.  She lives in the Czech Republic with her husband, Paul McNulty, an American builder of fortepianos and other period keyboard instruments.  McNulty says he came to the Czech Republic to establish his workshop near the forest where Graf obtained the wood for his instruments.  All McNulty’s instruments are made of wood from this same area.  It’s one of these that we hear in this recording.

And one final link to the past; the cover of the CD is a reproduction of a watercolor landscape by Mendelssohn, Ansichten aus der Schweiz.  It’s a beautiful release from any angle.