While Mendelssohn's Quartets and sometimes his brilliant Octets too, it's a completely different story when it comes to his String Quintet Op. 87 from 1845, written two years before the musician's death. But it contains many beautiful elements: a main opening theme which, oddly, rather recalls the Octet (one of the earliest works from his youth), as a kind of invisible — but very audible — bridge linking the young Felix to Mendelssohn the global celebrity; a rather ghostly Scherzo, far removed from the jauntiness of most scherzos — almost Brucknerian... This masterpiece is in the capable hands of five musicians of the Viennese string sextet, or the Wiener Streichsextett, which was founded in 1981 and wound up in 2004, here at the height of its powers. Note also that the ensemble kept the same six members throughout all the 23 years of its existence. © SM/Qobuz