Click on the image above to view the program book online.
Like most young men of means in 19th-century Europe, Mendelssohn set off on a Grand Tour at the age of 20. His itinerary included, unusually, a walking tour of Scotland, and while there he was greatly moved by the dramatic landscape and the bloody history of Mary Queen of Scots. He began writing his Scottish Symphony during his travels, although he didn’t complete it until a decade later. But Scotland had left its mark on him, and the symphony seems to evoke the striking countryside.
Equally evocative is Mendelssohn’s Overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written when he was just 17 – the quick, playful strings at the start suggest the scampering of fairy feet, and later you can hear the braying of Bottom after he has been turned into a donkey.
Despite its lightness of touch, Beethoven’s Eighth is perhaps his most radical symphony. It abandons traditional structures, it leaps from loud to soft without warning, and at every turn it surprises and confounds expectations. When asked by his pupil Carl Czerny why the Eighth was less popular than the Seventh, Beethoven is said to have replied, “because the Eighth is so much better” – an intriguing answer for a fascinating symphony!
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