JOACHIM MENDELSON (1892-1943): Symphony No. 2, Chamber Symphony (Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Jürgen Bruns), Quintet for Oboe, Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano (Frédéric Tardy [oboe], Ulrike Petersen [violin], Ignacy Miecznikowski [viola], Claudio Corbach [cello], Tatjana Blome [piano], Violin Sonata (Petersen, Blome).

Description: Mendelson was born in Warsaw in 1892, and studied composition in his hometown and in Berlin. Like nearly all Polish composers of his generation, he went to Paris in the 1920s, where he joined the Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonais, in which Poland’s entire musical elite gradually came together and, under the patronage of Karol Szymanowski, Arthur Rubinstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Maurice Ravel, and Nadia Boulanger, enriched the musical life of the metropolis on the Seine with extremely interesting colours. In the middle of the 1930s, Mendelson accepted a professorship at the Warsaw College of Music. After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, he was interned in the Warsaw ghetto, where he was murdered in 1943. Only five of his compositions survived the war and his only two symphonies (from 1938 and 1939) are products of his immersion in the multifarious musical life of Paris as well as contain elements of German and Slavic influences - now you hear Stravinsky, wasn’t that rather Ravelian?, hey, a bit of Martinu, geez, that was like Richard Strauss!, ah! Hindemithian Neue Sachlichkeit - that’s how every one of these pieces goes: all kinds of reminders of other composers but woven into a striking personal style.