Mendelssohn: Organ Music

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) received his main musical education from the famous teacher and composer Carl Friedrich Zelter, who thoroughly schooled him in traditional composition, counterpoint and music history. Zelter was also a great Bach admirer and regularly performed his works at the Berliner Singakademie, of which the Mendelssohn family were also members. It was Zelter who urged the young Mendelssohn to play the organ as well as the piano, and this led to his lifetime relationship with this majestic instrument.

This new recording presents some of Mendelssohn's best organ works: three of his superb Organ Sonatas Op. 65 (Nos. 3, 4 and 6), as well as some spectacular transcriptions from his Midsummer Night's Dream (the famous Scherzo) and his oratorio Paulus.

Dutch organist Matthias Havinga plays on the famous 1830 Bätz organ of the Ronde or Koepelkerk in Amsterdam, a magnificent instrument which fits Mendelssohn's style perfectly, as he professed to like "a strong and powerful organ, where the sound doesn't shake at all, and is not lacking in various types of lovely soft registers".