Fri 2 May 2025 • 20.15 Sun 4 May 2025 • 14.15
Mendelssohn and Mozart
PROGRAMME
conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada
piano Fazıl Say
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21 (1826)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K 467 (1786)
• Allegro maestoso
• Andante
• Allegro vivace assai
intermission
Carlijn Metselaar (1989)
Herinnering (2024; world premiere)
Commissioned by the Rotterdam Philharmonic with funding by the Rudi Martinus van Dijk Foundation
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 ‘Reformation’ (1830/32)
• Andante - Allegro con fuoco
• Allegro vivace
• Andante
• Andante con moto - Allegro maestoso
Concert ends at around 22.15/16.15
Most recent performances by our orchestra:
Mendelssohn Overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Nov 2012, conductor Philippe Herreweghe
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21: Mar 2013, piano
Imogen Cooper, conductor Ludovic Morlot
Metselaar Herinnering: World Premiere
Mendelssohn Symphony No. 5 ‘Reformation’: Nov 2015, conductor Jérémie Rhorer
One hour before the start of the concert, Gijsbert Kok will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €7,50. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.
Cover: Photo Mark Kamalov (Unsplash)
Puck and Fairies, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Painting by Joseph Noel Paton (c. 1850). Coll. Yale Center for British Art
Failed Memories (David and the Kaleidoscope).
Collage by David Szauder (2016)
Remembrance
Felix Mendelssohn was born into a Jewish family, which was reason enough for the Nazis to ban the performance of his music. Eighty years since liberation, we recall how voices such as his could be silenced, and how vital our remembrance is to ensure that history does not repeat itself.
Dream world
The brilliantly orchestrated opening chords of the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream are like four steps that lead immediately into a higher dream world. At the age of seventeen, Felix Mendelssohn composed this music sitting in the large, park-like garden at the back of his family home in Berlin. It was the summer of 1826, a time he would later recall as ‘one endless celebration, filled with poetry, music, games, plays, and fancy-dress parties.’ Every so often he would break away from the high jinks to scribble down some notes on paper. Thus he created his fairytale overture inspired by Shakespeare play of the same name. The young Mendelssohn described his idea to set the masterful comedy to music as ‘bordering on reckless’. Fortunately, he did not let the challenge hold him back: his overture is woven from the fabric of which dreams are made.
Huge attraction
‘Bravo, Mozart!’ called out the emperor from his theatre box, waving his hat. In the season 1784-1785 Mozart could rely on the support of all of Vienna. At the age of 29, the composer was at the height of his fame. As a pianist he was celebrated throughout the city: over the winter of that year he had kept his audience
satisfied with as many as six new piano concertos, performed by himself as soloist, at the special ‘Academies’ – public concerts that he organised personally at his own expense. The fact that Mozart performed as soloist had its advantages. He did not need to write out the solo part, which he knew by heart. How did the conductor cope with this arrangement? There was no conductor: Mozart led the orchestra himself from the piano. He was a huge attraction.
Mozart’s father, who had travelled from Salzburg to Vienna to see if Wolfgang was making a success of his life, could be proud. His son was earning good money: ‘Your brother’s concert evening earned him 559 florins,’ their father wrote to his daughter Nannerl, following the premiere of the Piano Concerto No. 21. Wolfgang’s busy concert schedule left his father reeling: ‘At the end of each Academy performance it is impossible to describe all the chaos and commotion; since I have been here your brother’s fortepiano has been transported from his home to the theatre and back, or to some other place, at least twelve times.’ Fortunately, in those days fortepianos were somewhat smaller and lighter than the grand pianos of today.
Crown shyness
Carlijn Metselaar was commissioned to write Herinnering (‘Remembrance’) by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for the Remembrance Day commemorations in May. About the work, she reflects: ‘I thought about the physical nature of remembrance, and how something such as a wartime experience can endure within the human body. The work is
based on a cantus firmus [a simple, repetitive melody that forms the base against which other voices counterpoint, ed.] that runs through the piece, perhaps like the human nervous system, which becomes increasingly disrupted. There is a sense of the music reaching out and trying to connect, but being constantly held back. The image that came to me is crown shyness, where the crowns of trees stop growing to avoid touching each other, creating beautiful lines of sky between each of them.’
Juvenile work
‘I can no longer abide the Reformation Symphony. I would rather burn this than any other work I have written.’ Mendelssohn might not have gone to such extremes, but he did withdraw the symphony. Not until twenty years after his death did the score again see the light of day. The symphony became known as Mendelssohn’s Fifth Symphony, Opus 107. These numbers are rather misleading, because in truth the Reformation was the second symphony composed by Mendelssohn: his Song of Praise, Scottish and Italian symphonies were all composed later.
His Reformation Symphony was born under an unlucky star. It took a full two years following its completion for it to actually be played. However, following early rehearsals of the work in Paris, in spring 1832, it was promptly pulled from the concert programme. ‘Too learned’, was the judgement of some, ‘lacking in melodies’. Too Protestant as well, maybe. Mendelssohn revised the symphony and in autumn of the same year the work was finally premiered. However, for Mendelssohn the magic was already lost: he could no longer enjoy the work.
In fact, things had gone wrong much earlier. In June 1830 Germany celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in
grand style. This confession of faith was a key document for Lutherans. Its submission to Emperor Charles V in 1530 had been a hugely significant event for the Protestant Reformation. With the anniversary approaching, Mendelssohn – born, it is true, into a Jewish family, but who had been baptised as a protestant at the age of seven –began work on his Reformation Symphony. At the end of the slow introduction he introduces the melody from the Dresden Amen; and in the last movement inserts Luther’s chorale Ein feste Burg in a glittering, fully orchestrated form. But whilst he was working on the symphony, he caught measles. This delayed completion of the composition, and Mendelssohn was unable to have the work ready in time for the anniversary celebrations. When the work eventually did get performed, two years later, the right moment had already gone.
‘Chaos and commotion; your brother’s fortepiano has been transported from his home to the theatre and back at least twelve times’
The disappointed Mendelssohn would later characterise the symphony as a ‘juvenile work’. We cannot really take such self-criticism seriously. From a composer who, at the age of seventeen, wrote the brilliant Midsummer Night’s Dream one can hardly label a work composed four years later as immature. In any event, there is within the Reformation Symphony so much that is beautiful to the ear that one quickly forgets that this is the work of a 21 year old daring to tackle his second great symphony.
Stephen Westra
Andrés Orozco-Estrada • conductor
Born: Medellín, Colombia
Current position: Music Director Orchestra
Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Music Director Designate of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne
Education: Instituto Musical Diego Echavarria; Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts, composition with Uroš Lajovic
Breakthrough: 2004, debut TonkünstlerOrchester Niederösterreich
Subsequently: Music Director Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi, Houston Symphony Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and Wiener Symphoniker; principal guest conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra; guest appearances with Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Münchner Philharmoniker, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; professor of orchestral conducting at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2013
Fazıl Say • piano
Born: Ankara, Turkey
Education: first piano lessons at age three, piano and composition at the Ankara State Conservatory, further studies with David Levine at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf and the Universität der Künste Berlin
Breakthrough: 1994, as winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions
Subsequently: Le Monde Award 2000, Echo Klassik 2001, 2009 and 2013, International Beethoven Prize 2016, Music Prize Duisburg 2017; Artist in Residence Konzerthaus Dortmund 2005–2010, Konzerthaus Berlin 2010–2011, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt 2012–13, Rheingau Music Festival 2013, Bodenseefestival 2014, Alte Oper Frankfurt 2015–2016, Zürcher Kammerorchester 2015–2016, Composer in Residence Dresdner Philharmonie 2018–2019
As a composer: four symphonies, various solo concertos, two oratorios, commissions by Salzburger Festspiele, Konzerthaus Wien, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, BBC Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2007
Photo: Julia Wesely
Photo: Fethi Karaduman
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Chief Conductor
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Honorary Conductor
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Principal Guest Conductor
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First Violin
Marieke Blankestijn, concertmaster
Tjeerd Top, concertmaster
Quirine Scheffers
Hed Yaron Meyerson
Saskia Otto
Arno Bons
Rachel Browne
Maria Dingjan
Marie-José Schrijner
Noëmi Bodden
Petra Visser
Sophia Torrenga
Hadewijch Hofland
Annerien Stuker
Alexandra van Beveren
Marie Duquesnoy
Giulio Greci
Second Violin
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Frank de Groot
Laurens van Vliet
Elina Staphorsius
Jun Yi Dou
Bob Bruyn
Eefje Habraken
Maija Reinikainen
Babette van den Berg
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Tobias Staub
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Viola
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Roman Spitzer
Galahad Samson
José Moura Nunes
Kerstin Bonk
Janine Baller
Francis Saunders
Veronika Lénártová
Rosalinde Kluck
León van den Berg
Olfje van der Klein
Jan Navarro
Cello
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Joanna Pachucka
Daniel Petrovitsch
Mario Rio
Eelco Beinema
Carla Schrijner
Pepijn Meeuws
Yi-Ting Fang
Killian White
Double Bass
Matthew Midgley
Ying Lai Green
Jonathan Focquaert
Arjen Leendertz
Ricardo Neto
Javier Clemen Martínez
Flute
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Joséphine Olech
Manon Gayet
Flute/Piccolo
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Oboe
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Anja van der Maten
Oboe/Cor Anglais
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Clarinet
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Bruno Bonansea
Alberto Sánchez García
Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet
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Bassoon
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Lola Descours
Marianne Prommel
Bassoon/ Contrabassoon
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Horn
David Fernández Alonso
Felipe Freitas
Wendy Leliveld
Richard Speetjens
Laurens Otto
Pierre Buizer
Trumpet
Alex Elia
Adrián Martínez
Simon Wierenga
Jos Verspagen
Trombone
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Alexander Verbeek
Remko de Jager
Bass Trombone
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Tuba
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Percussion
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Harp
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