We’ve got the Grand Tour to thank for some of the nineteenth century’s greatest music, including Mendelsson’s. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was customary for wealthy and upper middle class people to “round out” their education, formal and otherwise, to go on a long trip to sample life and cultures of other European countries. Traveling wasn’t as quick, safe and easy then, and mass tourism only became possible in the mid 19^th century, so these trips were major undertakings; travelers moved leisurely, often staying in their destination countries for months or even longer. Mendelssohn, already famous as child prodigy, left his prosperous German banking family and started on his tour in 1829 at the age of 20, only returning to his Berlin home four years later. The Italian wing of his tour began in Venice, and then he travelled to Rome and Naples. And it is this we have to thank for one of the sunniest pieces in all classical music.

He appears to have written most of the “Italian” symphony while in Rome during the spring of 1830, in his rooms not far from the famous Spanish Steps, allowing his ideas for the symphony to develop. While there he had made the acquaintance of a painter named Horace Vernet. He took a stroll with Vernet to his lodgings in January 1831. They heard musical sounds and discovered an impromptu vocal concert taking place.

Mendelssohn wrote his parents back in Berlin, “ I helped them as best I could and we had a very good time. Afterwards we danced and I wish you could have seen Louise Vernet, (the painter’s daughter) dancing the Saltarello with her father! When at length she was forced to stop for a few moments, se snatched up a tambourine, playing with spirit and relieving us, who could hardly move our hands any longer. …”

In mid February Mendelssohn wrote to his parents that he was making rapid progress in his Italian symphony, “…it will be the most amusing piece I have yet composed, especially the last movement, I have not yet decided on the Adagio ( he dropped this idea for the second movement shortly afterwards and termed it Andante con moto) but I think I shall reserve it for Naples.”

The symphony was premiered in London in 1833 and was a huge success. In spite of the wonderful, sunny spontaneous feel of the music, Mendelssohn was dissatisfied with it and reworked and revised it a number of times before submitting it to his publishers. . Which explains why although the Italian is actually his second symphony, it is listed as his fourth. Whatever, it has remained one of his most popular.

What’s in our player now: Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 “Italian”: L. Bernstein, cond. New York Philharmonic - Sony SMK 47582

For a record critic or a writer on music the hardest thing is to find the right words to express the experience that music provides. Add to this difficulty the fact that, thanks to the ongoing music festival that is Chicago, last night we heard this symphony performed by the Grant Park Orchestra conducted by Pinchas Zuckerman, a close personal friend of Bernstein (and a protégé of the fore mentioned Isaac Stern)

Mendelssohn himself was fond of saying that music is a language too deep for words, but this symphony has everything; delicate impressionism, and all the drive and drama you could want. You can take it to the limit. Which is exactly what Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic do, responding with spot-on- attack and knife-edge accuracy to Mendelssohn’s demands. Of the hundreds of recordings Bernstein made during his tenure in the late 50’s to mid 60’s, this ranks with the his best. Bubbling vintage champagne.