Mendelssohn’s ‘Reformation’

The evening

Felix Mendelssohn dispenses with the Lutheran inspiration for his ‘Reformation Symphony’ in just a few bars, but the work as a whole is a ray of sunshine – clean, bright, and deliciously good-humoured. Tonight, it is paired with a second work by the young Mendelssohn. His Hebrides Overture conjures scenes of his ‘lonely island’, the mysterious Fingal’s Cave in Scotland, seen on an 1829 excursion to the Isle of Staffa.

History has traditionally viewed Clara Schumann’s life through her relationships with her husband Robert and her loyal friend Johannes Brahms. In Clara, a twenty-minute orchestral rhapsody, Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz sets out a poetic examination of Clara and Robert’s relationship. With twinkling textures and strong narrative unfoldings, it sounds little like anything either Schumann wrote. But, the composer writes, ‘through Clara, Clara Wieck Schumann is here, in this concert hall with us.’

Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4, with its famous Rondo, is the composer at his jovial best, but what sounds easy today was fiendishly difficult in Mozart’s time. Virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb was one of the first practitioners to be able to produce chromatic runs on his valveless horn, meaning Mozart could add melodic fluidity to his more traditional ‘huntsman’ music.