Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Elias [Hybrid SACD]

Elijah, Mendelssohn's second great oratorio, was composed just a year before his premature death. This excitingly dramatic work also expresses a fervent belief in God, a belief which in the 19th century was no longer self-evident. Mendelssohn transposed the “visible world, as it appears in every chapter of the Old Testament” and as he recognized it in the biblical model into numerous musical expressive possibilities in which Old Testament texts were shaped into biblical dramas, or through the events of the Psalm texts, or through commentaries from the words of the Prophets. Justifiedly, Elijah is regarded as a milestone in Mendelssohn’s compositional output and as a high point in the oratorio literature of the 19th century. Elijah Frieder Bernius continues the prizewinning Carus series of the sacred works of Mendelssohn.