Symphony concert 12

On 7 August 1829, Mendelssohn Bartholdy would not have been able to send his family a selfie. So instead he sent 21 bars of music by letter »to make clear to you the extraordinary effect the Hebrides have had on me. […] You’ll excuse me if I keep it short; what’s more, the best I have to report is precisely in the above lines of music.« With his overture, which occurred to him at the sight of an enormous cave along the lonely Scottish cliffs, he became one of the founders of programme music. Programmatic backgrounds were always presumed in Beethoven’s Fifth: is fate actually knocking at the door here? Or are the four knocking tones of the main motif that pulsate through the entire symphony a challenge to all tyrants? Every age has found its interpretation of the Fifth – Gürzenich General Music Director Francois-Xavier Roth will search for today’s »symphony of fate«. As the conclusion and culmination of the season you can also hear a new flute concerto written by Philippe Manoury, »Composer for Cologne«, written for arguably the greatest flute virtuoso of the present day: Emmanuel Pahud.