Freiburger Barockorchester

“I have been hearing drums and trumpets in my head for days”, Robert Schumann wrote to his friend Felix Mendelssohn in 1845. Here Schumann was describing not only his emotional state, but also the musical ideas leading him towards the composition of his Symphony No. 2. The Freiburger Barockorchester under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle combines this impressive multi-layered work with Schumann’s Violin Concerto which was never performed during the composer’s lifetime. Performing on historical instruments, the ensemble and soloist Isabelle Faust approach Schumann’s emotionally complex tonal world, laying bare the roots of this brilliant composer of the Romantic period.

The concert begins with the overture for Schumann’s only opera Genoveva. Before setting a single line of the opera libretto to music, Schumann composed this highly effective orchestral piece which unifies all the principal motifs of the musical drama. The compositional models Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and also Mendelssohn can all be heard in his Symphony No. 2, although the original, profoundly expressive musical language of Schumann is communicated in every single bar right from its melancholy beginnings up to the euphoric finale. It was the outstanding artistry of the violinist Joseph Joachim which motivated Schumann to compose his Violin Concerto in D minor in 1853. The work was however never performed during the composer’s lifetime and the first performance over eighty years later in Berlin with Georg Kulenkampff was coloured by the attempts of the Nazis to play the work off against Mendelssohn’s E minor Violin Concerto. Today, Schumann’s work is counted among the great Romantic solo concertos and reveals much of the inner self of its creator, displaying the unvarnished expressivity of a borderliner who could not have wished for a more sensitive performer than Isabelle Faust. Her intensive approach to Schumann’s late work has been considered exemplary for many years and has resulted in highly acclaimed recordings. The violinist with close associations with the Musikfest Berlin displays an intensely nuanced fragility in her playing and lends the music of Robert Schumann particular clarity and transparency.

Tickets: €20 - 105