Performer: WDR Symphony Orchestra

Brio is one important element in the mining of Romantic feeling. Not everything worked in this combination of Mendelssohn, Bruch and Schumann.

A strong connection between Manfred Honeck and the WDR musicians was clearly palpable during the entire performance.

Romanticism found both its source and its end at Salle Pleyel on Tuesday night: Beethoven’s Egmont overture, incidental music for a heroic drama written by Goethe, and his Fifth Symphony, where it has been said that “Fate knocks at the door” – both works composed before 1810 – and Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, created in 1948, when the last notes of Romanticism in music history were dying slow