Organization

Conductor

Ruth Reinhardt

Singer

Soprano

Amanda Majeski

Sopran

Orchestra

National Symphony Orchestra

National Concert Hall

NSO And Ruth Reinhardt: Webern, Richard Strauss, Mendelssohn

Dublin

Ireland

National Concert Hall (NCH)

Main Auditorium

NSO And Ruth Reinhardt: Webern, Richard Strauss, Mendelssohn: Passacaglia for orchestra, op. 1 (+2 More)

Public

Passacaglia

Four Last Songs

Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, op. 56 ("Scottish")

Approved

NSO And Ruth Reinhardt: Webern, Richard Strauss, Mendelssohn: Passacaglia for orchestra, op. 1 Webern (+2 More)

A first work by Webern, a last work from Richard Strauss, and a Mendelssohn symphony of brilliant maturity, skewer into the hidden recesses of the heart and light up a landscape of wild beauty.

Ruth Reinhardt, ‘an incisive musician of real depth’ (Dallas Morning News), and rising star Jennifer Davis, ‘a star being born’ (The Telegraph), make welcome returns for three works that decorously clothe the new in the old, celebrate the marriage of voice and orchestra, and hymn a rugged landscape of wild, untamed beauty.

Harking back 300 years from the early 20th century, Webern’s Passacaglia was the first work he admitted to his catalogue. Unlike his later music marking him out as a devout modernist, this is a clarion call for late Romanticism – a work of clashing emotions melded into a remarkable display of orchestral fire and finesse.

Brittle, bittersweet, bathed in a golden, burnished glow, and described by the eminent critic Neville Cardus as ‘the most beautifully delivered farewell in all music’, Four Last Songs, the final work by the 84-year-old Richard Strauss, is couched in dark rapture, the soprano voice floating serenely above a bed of orchestral embers that flare into life and subside again in music of ravishingly, hypnotic beauty.

Mendelssohn’s melody-filled Scottish Symphony, laced with accents of Scotland’s traditional folk music, is one of the glories of musical Romanticism. Inspired by a holiday in the remote highlands and islands, and by the country’s history and literature, it is a stirring tour de force laced with all the bracing, panoramic grandeur of Scotland’s wild beauty and brimming with one memorable tune after another.

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Ensemble