s Walpurgisnacht – Collegium Vocale Gent

Collegium Vocale Gent

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
PHILIPPE HERREWEGHE

14/03/2019 — 00:00
Bozar | Brussel | BE

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

tickets

Walpurgisnacht

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.