Symphony Concert IV | Philharmonie

Even in his early years, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy astonished audiences with his exceptional compositional skills. Infusing classical forms with a new Romantic spirit and giving sound and expression new dimensions were hallmarks of his creative work. This is evident both in his ingenious overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream — the work of a seventeen-year-old — and in the concert overture Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt from 1828, a musical reflection on two atmospherically very different poems by the revered Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The very young Mendelssohn is represented here by his Violin Concerto in D minor, accompanied solely by strings; though trained in the style of Mozart, it is nonetheless shaped by his own individual approach. In the Reformations-Symphonie, however—composed in 1830 to mark the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 1830 and premiered two years later with the Berlin Court Orchestra under his own direction, a serious, solemn tone emerges, while the quotations included—the “Dresden Amen” and Luther’s chorale “A Mighty Fortress”—point to the sacred realm.