Organ Sonatas (Mendelssohn)

[2] In an article in the magazine Musical World of 1838, the English organist Henry John Gauntlett noted: His execution of Bach's music is transcendently great [...] His extempore playing is very diversified – the soft movements full of tenderness and expression, exquisitely beautiful and impassioned [...] In his loud preludes there are an endless variety of new ideas [....] and the pedal passages so novel and independent [...] as to take his auditor quite by surprise.

[5] The publisher's original announcement referred to the work as "Mendelssohn's School of Organ-Playing" (see illustration), but this title was rescinded at the composer's request.

[13] Although British critics rated the music highly, often drawing attention to its echoes of the composer's improvisatory style, Mendelssohn himself never performed any of the sonatas in public, either in England or elsewhere.

[15] The sonatas were well received in other European countries, as they had been simultaneously published by Maurice Schlesinger in Paris, Ricordi in Milan, and Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig.

Robert Schumann wrote to Mendelssohn in 1845 that he and his wife had played them over on the piano, and described them as "intensely poetical [...] what a perfect picture they form!