LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Felix Mendelssohn: Visits
built 642 days ago
Mendelssohn won a short hiatus from his accumulating duties when he took a leave of absence from his post at the Gewandhaus during the 1844-45 season. Before his sabbatical began... Mendelssohn had to fulfill a commitment to conduct the London Philharmonic Society Orchestra in a series of concerts during the late spring of 1844. This English engagement created the same spectacular success that was to follow each of his other eight visits to that country.
Source:
Mendelssohn had a great affection for London. He called it "the grandest and the most complicated monster on the face of the earth." He came to it again and again, and was never tired of praising the "smoky nest." Amid the glories of a Naples spring he could write that "My heart swells when I even think of London.’ On this first visit he lodged with a Mr. Heinke, a German ironmonger, at 103 (now 79) Great Portland Street. Mrs. Heinke made capital bread-and-butter puddings, and Mendelssohn was so found of them that he asked her to keep a reserve in the cupboard of his sitting-room, so that he might help himself when he came in late at night. The cup supporting a pie-crust was a novelty to him, and he was always much amused when it was lifted and the juice bubbled out. He had the simple enjoyments of an overgrown boy. An incident of this same visit may be told in his own words.
Source:
As a youngster Felix ... studied with Carl Friedrich Zelter, Director of the Berlin Singakademie. Zelter ultimately gave Mendelssohn use of the Akademie musicians for the historic Bach revival for which Mendelssohn was later responsible. At 12, Felix was taken to Weimar by Zelter to visit his friend Goethe, 60 years the boy's senior and already a cultural icon. Felix wrote home, "Every afternoon Goethe opens the piano with these words, `Make a little noise for me,'" after which the boy would play Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (whom Goethe himself had met 9 years before). That piano is now on view at the Goethe House Museum in Weimar, and Felix's Piano Quartet Op.3, written three years later, was dedicated to Goethe.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Visits