When I was a college student in the 1960s, those of us who hung out at night in the music department — ostensibly to use the practice rooms — often wasted our time by sitting around in a makeshift lounge, where we drank endless cups of acrid coffee from a barrel-sized percolator and played a game of "What If.”

Specifically, if you could be any famous (and dead) composer, who would it be?

The choice hinged as much on the quality of the life the composer lived as what the composer accomplished. Nobody wanted to be Beethoven, because he had a tortured existence and went deaf. Ditto for Handel, who suffered from severe depression and migraines. Or Chopin, who had tuberculosis.

My choice was Felix Mendelssohn, the subject of Minnesota Orchestra’s "Inside the Classics" concert series later this month. In college, I thought he had all the credentials: born rich, a child prodigy, multi-talented (composer, conductor, writer, painter), acclaimed in his lifetime, a happy existence with a good marriage and five kids. True, he died young — but when you’re 19, it seems that 38 is a long way off. Besides, he didn’t tarry; he just plopped over dead one day.

By the 1960s, Mendelssohn’s artistic reputation had been thoroughly restored, rescued from a 19^th century assessment as a composer of facile and inconsequential music. He was a rediscovered treasure.

It wasn’t until I read more about Mendelssohn from biographers like Donald Mintz that less-compelling details began to emerge. His ebullience, Mintz noted, was on the manic side — and the inevitable obverse of that was depression. Moreover, being a baptized Jew in Germany in the early 19^th century was far from comfortable. And there were hints that his marriage wasn’t as solid as first thought.

Ah, well. We’re now on the cusp of Mendelssohn’s second centenary — he was born on Feb. 3, 1809 — and he will be the subject of one of the Minnesota Orchestra’s "Inside the Classics" series of concerts on Jan. 28 and 29.

Conducted by Sarah Hicks, the orchestra’s assistant conductor, the program is a combination of biography and a sampling of excerpts. It’s hosted by orchestra violinist Sam Bergman and the soloists include the well-known Baldwin sisters — soprano Jennifer Baldwin Peden and mezzo Christina Baldwin.

They’ll sing one of Mendelssohn’s art songs, "When I look into your eyes" (that’s "Wenn ich in deine Augen sehe," for you German speakers). The instrumental part of the program includes a complete performance of the Symphony No. 4, "Italian."

For ticket information go here. And to read one of Berman’s interesting blogs on Mendelssohn, go here.