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The Mendelssohn Effect

Tuesday 24th February 2009 at 7.30pm
Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
Ticket details from the Box Office: 0115 989 5555
Online booking available

Lauma Skride, Piano and Baiba Skride, Violin - photo credit Marco Borggreve

Over the course of the calendar year 2009, the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn's birth, sinfonia ViVA will be looking at this composer's most popular and some less familiar masterworks, alongside other German composers affected by religious conflicts, social marginalisation and emigration: Bach, Schoenberg, Weill and Wagner.

Returning as piano soloist tonight is the terrifically talented Lauma Skride who is joined by her virtuosic sister and performing partner Baiba Skride as violin soloist for this programme of Mendelssohn and Wagner with sinfonia ViVA conducted by Principal Conductor André de Ridder.

Wagner's Siegfried Idyll was composed as a birthday gift to the composer's second wife Cosima to celebrate the birth of their eponymous son Siegfried in 1869. Though humble in origin, the significance of the work was such that elements of the Idyll were to resurface in the subsequent 1876 opera Siegfried, the third of the four operas that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen.

On to Mendelssohn's wonderfully evocative Concerto in D minor for Violin and Piano. Composed in 1823 initially as a small scale work, Mendelssohn subsequently added further orchestration and developed the piece to its final form. After its initial performances, the work remained unperformed for over 100 years until it was rediscovered in the mid 20th century.

Each of Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos - written between 1718 and 1721 and commissioned by and dedicated to the nobleman Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg - is for a different combination of instruments. Concerto No.3 is for strings alone and has only two movements; the first strong and energetic, the second less dramatic, though equally quick.

Mozart's Symphony No.39 was written along with two others in a period of just six weeks in the summer of 1788 - the three together comprising the composer's last symphonic works. Produced during a time of personal challenge caused by a decline in his popularity and consequent financial stringency, this is a complex and enigmatic piece of shifting moods, its ending memorably dramatic.

Supported by Arts Council England.

Photo credits: Lauma Skride and Baiba Skride (Marco Borggreve).