Guest in Fürth

An exciting concert for us, with lots of creative space for individual orchestra members and new musical perspectives. We welcome Jörg Widmann to the conductor's podium, a versatile artist who is both a soloist and composer of some of the pieces – and who once gave this wonderful answer to the question of how important live music is: that »in this age of technical reproducibility and accessibility of music at any time and in any place in the world, it is more than ever the human being singing and playing on stage, without a safety net, who has the power to captivate and fascinate us«. We look forward to playing with him and will kick off this exquisitely designed programme with an orchestral trip to Scotland, where we shall capture the atmosphere of a legendary Hebridean island with its »salt air, cod liver oil and seagulls«, just as Mendelssohn desired. We will also immerse ourselves in the impetuous C minor symphony by the then 15-year-old composer, as well as in equally impresive works and arrangements by Jörg Widmann: there is a sophisticated attempt at a fugue that experiments with innovative sound effects and also integrates the singing of profound preacher’s verses. An enchanting, crystalline quality pervades the arrangement of an early and largely unknown Mendelssohn Andante, which Widmann described as »wonder music« (Wundermusik). His whimsical paraphrase of the well-known wedding march from »A Midsummer Night’s Dream«, a work dominated by elves and the pranks of the imp Puck, has been described as displaying »great joy in playing and benevolent irony« – and Ilian Garnetz, our first concertmaster, in particular, is able to indulge himself here with incredibly virtuosic violin passages.

Tickets from 25.08.2025 10 a.m.