ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
PHILIPPE HERREWEGHE
Franz LISZT (1811-1886):
Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus Faust, S599
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791):
Piano concerto No.15, K.450
Felix MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847):
Die erste Walpurgisnacht op.60
Sophie Harmsen alto
Werner Güra tenor
Johannes Weisser baritone
Tareq Nazmi bass
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
Collegium Vocale Gent
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
David Afkham conductor
It was Carl Friedrich Zelter, conductor of the Berliner Singakademie, who taught his pupil Felix Mendelssohn the enthusiasm for Bach’s music. But his merit was also to bring the young composer into contact with none less than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Zelter’s attempts to set Goethe’s ballad Die erste Walpurgisnacht to music had previously failed. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, was immediately attracted to the magical world and the great symbolic power of the text. With humour as his ingenious weapon, he exposes the conflict between the hypocrisy of the church as an institution and the traditional religion of nature full of witches and druids in a whirling profane cantata for soloists, choir and orchestra.