Interview
Alan Gilbert in conversation with Emmanuel Pahud Alan Gilbert conducts landscape scenes by Mendelssohn and Nielsen
Landscapes and folklore have inspired the creativity of many great composers. Alan Gilbert presents two lovely examples in this concert. While Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony reflects impressions of his travels in Scotland, Carl Nielsen’s musical language is shaped almost entirely by the composer’s Danish home, as his atmospherically dense Symphony Nr. 3 proves.
“Without any real purpose, just for my enjoyment,” Felix Mendelssohn travelled around the Scottish islands after a guest performance in London in 1829. Their wild nature, still to a large extent pristine, which Mendelssohn also recorded in drawings in his travel journal, and his encounter with evidence of Scottish history inspired the young composer to two of his best-known orchestral works.
With his concert overture The Hebrides op. 26, Mendelssohn paid musical tribute to a group of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland; his visit to Edinburgh provided the impetus for him to compose his Third Symphony: “We went in the deep twilight to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved,” Mendelssohn wrote to his parents on 30 July 1829. “The chapel next door is lacking a roof; grass and ivy grow abundantly on it; and before the altar, now in ruins, Mary was crowned Queen of Scots. Everything around is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines through. I believe I found today the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.”
Alan Gilbert combines this work by Mendelssohn with the Symphony No. 3 by the Dane Carl Nielsen, which received its premiere in 1912 under the direction of its composer. The work, which he gave the enigmatic title Sinfonia espansiva, is a perfect example of symphonic traditions beyond the German-speaking cultural sphere – and thus worth discovering time and again!
Berliner Philharmoniker
Alan Gilbert
© 2014 Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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