ICBC Great Classics: Fairytale Romance

Conductor - Giordano Bellincampi

Mozart - Symphony No.25
Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Suite
Brahms - Serenade No.1

To open the evening is perhaps Mozart’s most tempestuous symphony, one of only two written in a minor key, and memorably used in the opening of Amadeus.

Mendelssohn adored Shakespeare and wrote an overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he was, amazingly, just 17. Years later he added some incidental music, which distils the essence of this most featherweight of comedies.

Brahms’ Serenade No. 1 evolved from a nonet for wind and strings into his first full orchestral work published in 1860. Strange as it may seem, this sweetly pastoral piece was considered to be daringly avant-garde and at the cutting edge of modernism.

NOTE: Change of repertoire – Brahms’ Serenade No.1 replaces Brahms’ Violin Concerto with soloist Benjamin Beilman who is unable to travel to New Zealand at this time.