Now, a hundred years after his death, a most definite reaction is in progress. Is it not, rather, a salutary readjustment than a mere reaction? If Mendelssohn's poorer works have not endured is it not better so? Struggle and suffering might, indeed, have lent a deeper undertone to his songs or enabled his adagios, in old Sir George Grove's words, "to draw tears where now they only give a saddened pleasure. But let us take a man as we have him. Surely there is enough conflict and violence in life and in art. When we want to be made unhappy we can turn to others. It is well in these agitated modern days to be able to point to one perfectly balanced nature in whose life, whose letters and whose music alike all is at once manly and refined, clever and pure, brilliant and solid. For the enjoyment of such shining heights of goodness we may well forego for once the depths of misery and sorrow".
And Grove's words taken on an added poignancy precisely because they were _not_ spoken of an epoch as grievous as our own!
[Illustration: Family Group. Sketch by Mendelssohn, Soden, 1844.]
COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS _by_ THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
Barber--Symphony No. 1 Beethoven--Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major ("Emperor") (with Rudolph Serkin, piano) Beethoven--Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major ("Eroica") Beethoven--Symphony No. 5 in C minor Beethoven--Symphony No. 8 in F Major Brahms--Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir) Dvorak--Slavonic Dance No. 1 Mahler--Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano) Mendelssohn--Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin) Mendelssohn--Midsummer Night's Dream--Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein) Mozart--Cosi Fan Tutte--Overture Mozart--Symphony No. 41 in C major ("Jupiter"), K. 551 Schubert--Symphony No. 7 in C major Schumann, R.--Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major ("Rhenish") Smetana--The Moldau ("Vltava") Strauss, J.--Emperor Waltz
Bizet--Carmen--Entr'acte (Prelude to Act III) Bizet--Symphony in C major Copland--A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator) Gershwin--American in Paris Ibert--"Escales" (Ports of Call) Liszt--Mephisto Waltz Moussorgsky--Gopak (The Fair at Sorotchinski) Moussorgsky-Ravel--Pictures at an Exhibition Prokofieff--Symphony No. 5, Op. 100 Rachmaninoff--Concerto No. 2 in C minor (with Gyorgy Sandor) Rachmaninoff--Symphony No. 2 in E minor Saint-Saens--Concerto No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus) Sibelius--Symphony No. 4 in A minor Tschaikowsky--Suite "Mozartiana" Tschaikowsky--Symphony No. 6 in B minor ("Pathétique") Wagner--Lohengrin--Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III--Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor) Wagner--Tristan und Isolde--Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano) Wagner--Die Walkure--Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Herbert Janssen, baritone) Wolf-Ferrari--"Secret of Suzanne", Overture