Mendelssohn: String Quintets Nos. 1 and 2

Mendelssohn’s musical precocity, both as a player and as a performer, manifested itself at a remarkably early age. In 1826, when he was only 17, Mendelssohn wrote not only his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream but the first of his two string quintets. The String Quintet No. 2 followed 19 years later, in 1845, two years before his death. Despite the intervening years, the two Quintets are similar in style and form, with richly melodic and haunting slow movements and two wonderfully contrasting scherzos