Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Symphony No. 6

In Paris they opened the Concertos of the Conservatoire the Younger with my A minor Symph. and played the Scherzo da Capo, which made me want to come with a new one until next winter, which I am starting now. This is what Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847) wrote in 1845 in an unpublished letter to his brother Paul (1841–1880), in which he mentioned the process of composing the unfinished Symphony No. 6 in C major, which lasted from about 1842 to 1846. However, it remained largely unknown and received little attention from Mendelssohn scholars until the most recent decades. Apart from the letter quoted above, the process of composing Symphony No. 6 in C major is known only in a limited number of details, and even these details are based solely on Mendelssohn's correspondence with his colleagues and relatives. The editor became aware of Mendelssohn's unfinished Symphony No. 6 in C major in the summer of 2020 after delving deeper into Mendelssohn's work. In September 2020, Luukas Hiltunen began reconstructing the symphony. A detailed report is included in the preface. It will be premiered in November 2026 by the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.