That Felix Mendelssohn’s brief 38-year existence fits neatly within the timeframe of ‘early musical Romanticism’ makes it easy to forget that his compositional style underwent significant changes during his lifetime. And that he is so readily associated with the revival of the nineteenth-century oratorio and with a handful of beloved orchestral and chamber works tends to overshadow his contributions to the repertoire of individual instruments, among them the cello. Thankfully, the recent recording on the JRI label of the composer’s complete works for this instrument serves as a reminder of precisely these two aspects of his oeuvre. What is more, it represents a marriage of performance and scholarship that is all too rare in the domain of nineteenth-century music, bringing cellist Nancy Green together with musicologist and ‘dean of Mendelssohn studies’, R. Larry Todd, who not only assumes the customary role of providing (extensive) liner notes but is also the pianist featured on the recording.

This union, to be sure, is a blessed one. Green sings with a warm, velvety tone that never comes across as too harsh or overbearing, while the expressive range of her playing reflects the rich textural palette of Mendelssohn’s evocative writing for the instrument. For his part, Todd commands the keyboard just as he does the pen, rising fully to the virtuosic challenges of Mendelssohn’s deceptively difficult quaver and semiquaver filigree. The offspring of this union comes in the form of two ‘original’ compositions featured on the disc: Todd’s completion of the unfinished Albumblatt for cello and his reconstruction of a fragment that once constituted the beginning of the fourth variation of the Variations concertantes, Op. 17. In the case of the former, Todd picks up from the dominant chord with which the composer’s 1835 sketch broke off, adding a tasteful ending that evinces a Baroque-like chromaticism and that, through what Todd himself acknowledges in the liner notes is an allusion to the aria ‘Es ist genug’ from Mendelssohn’s Elijah (1846), provides a bridge of sorts between the ‘modern’, song-without-word aesthetic of the sketch and the music of the past so frequently evoked by Mendelssohn’s second oratorio.

The reconstructed variation from Op. 17 is the final track on the recording, and it provides some valuable insight into the variation set as a whole with which the disc begins. Composed during a period in the mid-to-late 1820s when Mendelssohn was attempting to come to terms with the legacy of Beethoven, the Variations concertantes reveal a bold willingness to juxtapose graceful, subdued material with explosive, highly virtuosic passages that evoke a Beethovenian aesthetic. Thus it is instructive to learn that Mendelssohn discarded a rather staid march version of the theme in favour of the somewhat manic fourth variation as we know it, whose virtuosic demisemiquaver writing in the piano points ahead to the overall texture of the work’s coda, in which the reference to Beethoven is made explicit through the use of passages that clearly recall the finale of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata Op. 27 No. 2.

The dual centrepieces of the album are the two enduringly popular cello sonatas, Opp. 45 and 58. The first of these, completed in 1838, reflects a stylistic shift in the composer’s chamber works away from Beethovenian tendencies toward a more refined, ‘classicizing’ Romanticism that once compelled Robert Schumann to describe Mendelssohn as the ‘Mozart of the nineteenth century’. Indeed, this music breathes an air of balance and of restrained lyricism, which is captured perfectly by Green and Todd, both of whom are careful to avoid exaggerated gestures or excessive mannerisms. It is perhaps worth remembering here that Mendelssohn’s idiomatic writing for the cello was informed not only by his own experience as a violinist but also by his close relationships with cellists both professional and amateur. Among the latter was Mendelssohn’s younger brother, Paul, who received the dedication of the Variations concertantes and for whom the cello sonatas were written.

The Op. 58 cello sonata of 1843 continues in much the same stylistic vein as its predecessor but is infused with a more ebullient lyricism and a dramatic quality that bespeaks an even more seasoned maturity on the part of its composer. Green and Todd’s rendering of the opening movement is a tour de force of brilliant virtuosity and sheer energy, balanced in their performance of the second movement allegretto scherzando with just the right sort of mischievous character. The spiritual heart of the work comes in the slow third movement, which opens with an original chorale theme played arpeggiando by the piano. In this way the work reveals a kinship with Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C minor Op. 66, which includes an original chorale in the finale and which was completed slightly less than two years after the cello sonata. Together with the recitative-like music in the cello that serves as a response, the chorale theme in Op. 58 lends the movement a distinctively narrative quality. Thus does Green’s rich, lyrical playing become a sort of disembodied voice, introducing an element of subjectivity to which the frequently lament-like nature of the music might be ascribed.

Two additional pieces round out this disc. One will be familiar to listeners of Mendelssohn’s cello music as the captivatingly beautiful Lied ohne Worte composed in 1845 and published in 1868 as the Romance sans paroles, Op. 109. The other, however, will likely be unfamiliar and thus is deserving of comment. Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Fantasia in G minor (1829) can be counted as yet another ‘bonus’ offering by Green and Todd along with the newly composed ending of the Albumblatt and the reconstruction of the variation from Op. 17 (to say nothing of the reproductions of various portraits, an autograph manuscript, and two watercolours by Mendelssohn that are found in the booklet accompanying the disc). One of only two works for cello that she completed during her lifetime, the Fantasia reveals Fanny’s music to be every bit as compelling as that of her brother, Felix. To be sure, subtle stylistic differences exist between the two, but these are outweighed by the vitality and lyrical richness that is shared in common by the music of these two siblings. And so, we might conclude, that listeners of this recording are beneficiaries of yet another union (or, rather, reunion): that of a brother and sister whose close fraternal bond was cemented by a mutual love of music, in spite of the fact that the social mores of the time dictated that they would follow such different professional paths.