Mendelssohn [Concerto] Concertos for Two Pianos and Orchestra – E; A flat. Benjamin Frith, Hugh Tinney (pfs); RTE Sinfonietta / Prionnsias O’Duinn.

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553416 (74 minutes: DDD).

Mendelssohn was 14 when he completed his first two-piano Concerto in E major, and still only 15 when he followed it with a considerably longer (rather too long) and more ambitious second in A flat. His elders were then undoubtedly wise in not publishing either: he had yet to find a voice of his own. But his craftsmanship was breathtaking. “A phenomenon... what are all the other prodigies compared with him? Mere gifted children.” So wrote the already famous 30-year-old pianist, Moscheles, in 1824 – proving his belief by partnering Mendelssohn in a London performance of the E major Concerto in 1829.

Both concertos were first heard at the Sunday morning music parties regularly given at the cultivated Mendelssohns’ Berlin home, with the composer’s much-loved, slightly older sister, Fanny, at the second piano. As her talents were akin to his own, the two solo parts are indistinguishable in their challenges. And it is to the great credit of Benjamin Frith and Hugh Tinney that without a score at hand, you would be hard-pressed to guess who was playing what. I was as impressed by their attunement of phrasing in lyrical contexts as by their synchronization in all the brilliant semiquaver passagework in which both works abound. Their uninhibited enjoyment of the imitative audacities of the later work’s finale is a real tour de force.

Under Prionnsias O’Duinn the RTE Sinfonietta play with sufficient relish to allow you to forget that the recording is perhaps just a little too close. In short, a not-to-be-missed opportunity to explore the precocious young Mendelssohn at super-bargain price.

JOC