About
Founded in 2002, the Ensemble Mendelssohn centers its activities around the rich but often unexplored string quintets and sextets literature, with or without piano, collaborating also with guest musicians in an extended repertoire.
In nearly 20 years, they have performed no less than 70 quintets and sextets, as well as few septets.
An Important part of the Ensemble Mendelssohn activities is also the development of the repertoire for quintets and sextets with renown composers or composers of the new generation, in order to promote these forms of chamber music in today's music.
This led to World Premiere and commissionned works especially written for quintets and sextets by composers such as Jean-Pierre Deleuze, Stéphane Orlando, Hajime Fukagawa, Anna Segal, Ola Gjeilo, Michel Lysight, Guillaume Auvray, Jacqueline Fontyn and Hao-Fu Zhang etc. Further projects are on the way with composers such as Vladimir Mendelssohn, Claude Ledoux and Nicolas Bacri among others.
In recent years, the Ensemble Mendelssohn has been touring in Japan, performing in venues such as Kobe Uhara Hall, Nara Akishino Ongakudo Hall, Tokyo Nippori Sunny Hall, Yokohama Lilis Hall, as well as in Turkey in Istanbul Kadıköy Süreyya Series and Albert Long Hall, Izmir Adnan Saygun, in Cyprus, in France, as well as the Festival de l'Eté Mosan, Festival Mozart, Festival Loop, Festival Musicorum, Concerts de Midi de Liège, Théâtre Royal de Liège, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi, Festival Musical en Savoie etc.
After the release of a Live CD with Tchaikovsky "Souvenir de Florence", Dvorak 1st piano quintet and Lysight 3 Croquis for string quintet (World Premiere), the Ensemble Mendelssohn came back to recording recently with a CD Dedicated to new works by Israeli composer Anna Segal (published by Harp&Co), and with clarinettist Aysegül Kirmanoglu, the Ensemble Mendelssohn recorded the complete works for clarinet and string by Mozart.
Upcoming projects includes bringing out an unknown aspect of the repertoire for string quintets 2 violas by Beethoven, including a complete cycle of period transcriptions for the 250th anniversary of his birth. Another project around the concept of the memory will see the creation of several new works for piano quintets.