He imagined Elias as a prophet “like the kind we could use again today, strong, zealous, also probably evil and angry and dark, in contrast to the court rabble and the rabble of the people, and in contrast to almost the whole world” – Felix Mendelssohn said characterizes the title character of his oratorio "Elias" op. 70 very aptly.

The plans for the work, which was to become one of his most important, he carried around with him for about ten years before he finally had to finish the commission for the premiere on August 26, 1846 at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival very quickly.

Guido Holze

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The performance with the huge cast of 271 choristers and 125 orchestra musicians became one of his greatest triumphs with "never-ending applause salvos of thunderous noise".

Nobody could have guessed that the busy Leipzig Gewandhaus Kapellmeister, who had long been known abroad and who also founded the conservatory in the Bach city and thus the oldest German music academy, would be dead just over a year later.

He died in Leipzig on November 4, 1847 at the age of only 38 after suffering several strokes.

The order came from Frankfurt

The Rheingau Music Festival is now paying tribute to Mendelssohn on the 175th anniversary of his death on the weekend of July 22nd to 24th with a packed programme, including the performance of "Elias" with the Windsbach Boys' Choir and the Stuttgart Philharmonic under the direction of Martin Lehmann in the basilica from Kloster Eberbach is the crowning glory.

Under the title "Spot on Mendelssohn" there is also the rare opportunity to hear the composer's other great oratorio in a direct comparison just two days earlier at the same place: the Audi Youth Choir Academy and the Academy for Early Music Berlin are performing "Paulus" op. 36 on July 22 under the direction of Martin Steidler.

The work about the life and work of the Apostle Paul is closely linked to Frankfurt, because the Frankfurt Cäcilienverein, which Mendelssohn headed interimly from 1836, gave the commission for it.

The commitment had a very positive side effect for him privately.

He met his future wife in the choir, founded in 1818 and highly praised by him, which today is one of the oldest oratorio choirs in Germany: Cécile Jeanrenaud and he married on March 28, 1837 in Frankfurt.

Through his connection to Cécile, Mendelssohn was a frequent guest in Frankfurt during these years, ie in the birthplace of Goethe, whom he had visited in Weimar as a twelve-year-old child prodigy with his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter.

At the time, the critical prince of poets was extremely impressed by the piano playing of the grandson of the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, to whom the boy had been introduced to him by his first-name friend, Zelter.

At that time, Zelter had already familiarized his outstanding pupil with the work of Bach, whose St. Matthew Passion Mendelssohn was to perform for the first time in Berlin in 1829 after a hundred years of slumber.

Letters from Fanny and Felix

With this, Mendelssohn ushered in the renaissance of the great choral works of Bach, who until then had been valued above all as a piano and organ master.

One fruit of Mendelssohn's interest in Bach, however, are his six organ sonatas op. 65. To this day they are part of the core repertoire of organists and are of crucial importance for the development of German organ romanticism.

At the Rheingau Music Festival on July 24 in the Church of St. Martin in Lorch, you will find a highly renowned and accomplished interpreter in the Leipzig Gewandhaus organist Michael Beauty.

Of course, Mendelssohn's most-performed work should not be missing from the festival: the Violin Concerto in E minor op. 64, which Mendelssohn conceived, like some of his organ works, during a spa stay in Bad Soden in the summer of 1844, will be performed on July 23 with the soloist Julia Fischer, who this year's focus artist of the Rheingau Music Festival.

The Kammerakademie Potsdam will also perform Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor op. 56 (“Scottish”) under the direction of Tarmo Peltokoski, the current Lotto prizewinner at the festival.

The Mendelssohn weekend also offers something special for friends of chamber music: At the "Night of the String Quartet" on July 23 in the Fürst von Metternich Concert Cube at Johannisberg Castle, the Meta4 ensemble and the Szymanowski Quartet, which instead of the initially 81 and the string quartet in E flat major op. 12 by Mendelssohn as well as the quartet in the same key by his sister Fanny Hensel.

The two ensembles naturally take on Mendelssohn's magnificent Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20, as their central work.

A musical and literary evening at Schloss Johannisberg rounds off the overall program on the following final evening: Corinna Harfouch and Hanns Zischler recite letters from Felix and Fanny, among other things.

The pianist Hideyo Harada accompanies this with music by the two siblings, who remained closely connected throughout their lives.

Spot on Mendelssohn, Rheingau Music Festival, July 22-24.