Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Kongre[beta]-Bericht Berlin 1994.(Review)

Edited by Christian Martin Schmidt. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel 1997. [351 p. ISBN 3-7651-0304-7. DM 93.]

The year 1997 marked the sesquicentennial of the deaths of Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. The event was commemorated by a few important conferences and festivals, and the year also witnessed the publication of several important critical editions of Felix's sacred works by Carus-Verlag (Stuttgart) and the appearance of the tenth volunse of MendelssohnStudien a Berlin-based journal committed to scholarly explorations of all aspects of the illustrious family's history; yet scholars produced surprisingly few studies devoted to the two siblings. The most important individual contributions to the literature were Peter Ward Jones's extensively annotated and lavishly illustrated edition of Felix and Cecile Mendelssohn's honeymoon diaries (The Mendelssohns on Honeymoon: The 1837 Diary of Felix and Cecile Mendelssohn Bartholdy, together with Letters to Their Families [Oxfortl: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]), a new edition of the composer's celebrated Familienbriefe (Felix M endelssohn Bartholdy, Briefe, ed. Beatrix Borchard, 2 vols. [Potsdam Verlag fur Berlin-Brandenburg, 1997]), an important compilation of contemporary memoirs (Roger Nichols, Mendelssohm Remembered [London: Faber and Faber, 1997]), and a useful study of the women in Felix's life (Brigitte Richter, Frauen um, Felix Mendelssohm Bartholdy [Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1997]).

By any standard, however, the most important compendium of scholarship published in 1997 concerning the life, works, and reception history of Felix Mendelssohn was a collection of papers originally preSented at a symposium held in Berlin on 12-15 May 1994 (itself a sequel to the landmark 1972 conference whose proceedings were published as the seminal Das Problem Mendelssohn, ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Stutlien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts 41 [Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1974]). Christian Martin Schmidt, who is perhaps best known for his extensive scholarship on Johannes Brahms and Arnold Schoenberg, is general editor of the Leipziger Ausgabe der Werke uon Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fur Musik, 1960-77; Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel 1997-), and his authority at the helm of that direly needed complete critical edition is confirmed by the vision he exerted in organizing anti publishing these studies.

The bulk of the volume comprises papers devoted to specific problematic areas within Mendelssohn's oeuvre. Wolfgang ...