Discover an evening bursting with drama, mysticism and irresistible folk melodies from three great early 19th-century Romantics.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra and its visionary founder-conductor Iván Fischer celebrate their 40th anniversary with a programme brimming with drama, mysticism and irresistible folk melodies.

In 1829, composer Felix Mendelssohn set off on a tour of Scotland. The country’s crofts and lochs had a profound effect on a 20-year-old raised on Sir Walter Scott’s Romantic novels. He certainly never forgot his twilight visit to Holyrood, even though it took 13 years to finally complete the atmospheric Scottish Symphony it inspired. His Violin Concerto is no less passionate, performed by electrifying Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich.

The concert also turns the spotlight on Mendelssohn’s devoted sister Fanny. A composer in her own right, her bubbling ‘Schnell fliehen die Schatten der Nacht’ is played and sung by the orchestra. Weber matches cheerful folk tunes with demonic rumblings in his opera Der Freischütz, and its overture packs quite a punch.

Tom Service and Nicola Benedetti introduce the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s final concert which includes Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.

0 Stars

Transparent fairy wind chords, scuttling high strings, braying portamentos and then the edging in of the final wistful string melody – all are incomparably lovely

The Guardian

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