Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, & 3 "The Scottish", Fingal's Cave Overture

By the time Felix Mendelssohn was 16, he could already boast an impressive list of compositions, including 12 string symphonies. Granted, by the same age Mozart -- who, along with Bach was the principal musical influence throughout Mendelssohn's life -- was penning masterworks, yet by every other standard, Mendelssohn's was clearly a prodigious talent. Born Jakob Ludwig Felix in 1809 in Hamburg, the child quickly demonstrated a penchant for music, and soon enough, for poetry and also art: as a young adult, he would document his first trip to England and Scotland in 1829 with a surprisingly communicative series of watercolors and sketches. And that communicative quality is what would stamp the music of his adult life. First, however, he had to develop a compositional foundation, built on the perfecting of Classical forms and Baroque techniques -- fugues, counterpoint, and so forth -- and this he did in the course of those 12 early symphonies.