FANNY MENDELSSOHN: Canciones (Arr. Tal-Haim Samnon)
Die Mainacht nº6, Op.9: Dämmrung Senkte Sich von Oben
Die Frühe Gräber nº 6, Op.1: Gondellied
FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Obertura Las hébridas, Op. 26 ‘La cueva de Fingal’
FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Infelice! Giá dal mio sguardo, Scena Drammatica, Op.94
FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 2, in Bb Major, Op.52 ‘Lobgesang’
Soprano: Chen Reiss (Artist in residence this season)
Soprano: Auxiliadora Toledano
Tenor: Filip Filipović
Coro del Teatro de la Maestranza
Choir Conductor: Íñigo Sampil
Conductor: Lucas Macías
Program notes
Throughout the history of music, nature has not only been an aesthetic resource, but also a profound reflection of the human soul. Already in the early 19th century, works such as Beethoven's ‘Pastoral’ Symphony anticipated the importance that landscapes and natural phenomena would have for a whole generation to come.
Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn were no strangers to this impulse. For both of them, nature was a kind of silent interlocutor: Fanny Mendelssohn found in the nocturnal landscape the inspiration for Die Mainacht, No. 6, Op. 9 - ‘The Night in May’ - a Lied with a melancholic atmosphere, sustained by an unusual triple hypercompass that manages to make the music float.
Something similar happens in Gondellied, No. 6, Op. 1 - ‘Gondola Song’-, where the gentle swaying of a Venetian boat becomes a sonorous metaphor for a serene and continuous buoyancy. This same undulating image profoundly marked Felix Mendelssohn during a trip to Scotland in 1829. The visit to Fingal's Grotto inspired his Overture The Hebrides, Op. 26, a work charged with musical symbolism, where the oscillations of the sea merge with the cavernous echo of the monumental geological formation.
The sea, also a symbol of loss, leads us to Infelice! -based on texts by Metastasio, and from there to his Symphony No. 2, Op. 52, conceived to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press, culminating in a choral hymn celebrating the light of knowledge as a bridge between mankind and history.
Juan Velázquez.-