German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser and Irish pianist Alasdair Beatson present a moving portrait of the Mendelssohn family with this recording of pieces by the siblings Felix and Fanny. Once composed for the popular Sunday Sessions at the Berlin Mendelssohn family house, these works fit into the typically nineteenth-century tradition of domestic music-making, albeit at the highest thinkable level. Beatson plays an 1837 Érard fortepiano, identical to the instrument that belonged to the Mendelssohn household when these pieces were composed.

Besides Felix Mendelssohn’s two sonatas for cello and piano, his Variations concertantes, op.17, Lied ohne Worte, op.109 and Albumblatt in B minor are featured. Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn’s Fantasia in G minor and Capriccio in A flat major show what could have become of this talented female composer if societal conventions had not  restricted her musical activities to the private salon.

This is Moser’s fifth album as an exclusive PENTATONE artist, after releases with the cello concertos of Dvořák and Lalo (2015), Elgar and Tchaikovsky (2017), works for cello and piano by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev (2016, awarded with a Diapason d’or and ECHO Klassik 2017), and cello concertos by Lutosławski and Dutilleux (2018). He records for the first time with Alasdair Beatson, who makes his PENTATONE debut.