2nd symphony concert

Claude Debussy Prélude á l'après-midi d'un faune
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Concerto for violin and orchestra in E minor op. 64
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy »A Midsummer Night's Dream« (excerpts from the incidental music)
Samy Moussa Nocturne   

The 2nd symphony concert of the Staatskapelle Weimar is surrounded by elf-tender sound magic, with the desire for seductive beauty running through the program like a red thread. Debussy's »Prélude«, one of the main works of musical impressionism and first performed in Paris in 1912, describes the dreams and desires of a faun who abandons himself to the beauties of nature. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's »A Midsummer Night's Dream« forms the romantic counterpart to this and takes us into a mysterious enchanted forest, where good-humored elves and a shrewd Puck cause plenty of amorous confusion.

That the goings-on of mysterious creatures of nature always fascinated the early Romantic Mendelssohn is also foreshadowed by his Violin Concerto (which is, of course, »absolute«, not programmatic), whose unmistakable main theme unfolds with longing and revelry over a shimmering orchestral sound.

An absolute highlight of the violin concerto repertoire, since hardly any other composer lets the solo instrument sing with such soulfulness! Finally, the Canadian composer Sammy Moussa, whose »Nocturne«, premiered in 2015, unceremoniously thwarts Mendelssohn's elfin magic and concludes the round of mysterious nature pieces - music full of dark shades of sound, which here and there even evoked the comparison of a »Wagner of the 21st century«.