Orchestre des Champs-Élysées & Vilde Frang

It's Mendelssohn and Schubert this evening. Mendelssohn had been wanting to write a violin concerto for a long time before he actually got down to doing so. "One in e minor is raging through my head and the beginning of it won't leave me alone for a moment..." however, it took another six years before he found the peace to work on it while on holiday in Bad Soden - resulting in the most elegant violin concerto of the romantic period. Vilde Frang from Norway will be performing it for us: 'under the younger generation of violinists [...] she strikes me as the most original' so it says in The Strad. 

Franz Schubert never heard a performance of his Symphony no. 9. What's more, it was Schumann who dug up the score from under a layer of dust at Schubert's brother's house after Schubert had already passed away. He had Mendelssohn premier it. A true conrnucopia; Schumann celebrated its 'Himmlische Länge' (heavenly length), which is why is it sometimes nicknamed 'the Great'.