Felix Mendelssohn: Complete Works on Spotify

"Mendelssohn never outgrew his precocious youthful style. [...] He remained stylistically conservative [...] feeling no need to attract attention with a display of 'revolutionary' novelty. Throughout his short career he remained comfortably faithful to the musical status quo – that is, the "classical" forms, as they were already thought of by his time. His version of romanticism, already evident in his earliest works, consisted in musical 'pictorialism' of a fairly conventional, objective nature (though exquisitely wrought)." - Richard Taruskin

This playlist is a collection of Mendelssohn's complete works available on Spotify. An early violin sonata (from 1820, composed when he was 11) and the exquisite string symphonies (taken from a dozen different recordings) are put at the beginning. Then follows works with opus numbers, Op.1 - 121 (only the opus numbers 1 to 72 were assigned by the composer, the later ones by publishers. The opus number sequence does not therefore always accord with the order of composition). Other works without opus number, including such notable ones like Concerto for Violin in D minor and Double Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra, are placed at the end.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Felix Mendelssohn: Complete Works (716 tracks, total time: 55 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. See list of compositions here. If you don't know where to begin, try this Naxos sampler: Mendelssohn: His Life and Music first.