Felix Mendelssohn
Piano music

The musicologist Glenn Stanley observes that "nlike Brahms, unlike his contemporaries Schumann, Chopin and Liszt, and unlike revered past masters....Mendelssohn did not regard the piano as a preferred medium for his most significant artistic statements". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte), eight cycles each containing six lyric pieces (two published posthumously), remain his most famous solo piano compositions. They became standard parlour recital items even during the composer's lifetime, and their overwhelming popularity, according to Todd, has itself caused many critics to underrate their musical value. As example, Charles Rosen equivocally commented, despite noting "how much beautiful music they contain", that "t is not true that they are insipid, but they might as well be." During the 19th century, composers who were inspired to produce similar pieces of their own included Charles-Valentin Alkan (his five sets of Chants, each ending with a barcarolle) and Anton Rubinstein.

Other notable piano works by Mendelssohn include his Variations sérieuses, Op. 54 (1841), the Rondo Capriccioso, the set of six Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35 (written between 1832 and 1837), and the Seven Characteristic Pieces, Op. 7 (1827).
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