Series of Summer Concerts
Suffolk Philharmonic Orchestra’s Summer Series of three concerts in Bury St Edmunds opens by showcasing not only three of Mendelssohn’s best-loved orchestral works, but also his most famous oratorio.
Young Classical Artists’ Trust prizewinner Matteo Cimatti plays Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto on Wednesday 8th July at 7.30pm at The Apex in a programme which opens with the “Hebrides” Overture and concludes with the “Italian” Symphony.
The strong geographical emphasis in the programme is biographical too. Felix Mendelssohn visited the Hebridean island of Staffa in 1829 during a trip to Scotland, in the course of which he experienced the rise and fall of the swell inside the sea-cave known as Fingal’s Cave, which is big enough to explore in a small boat. By 1830 not only had he translated the rise and fall of the sea-swell inside the cave into musical terms, creating one of the best-loved and most descriptive of all concert overtures, but he had also set out on further travels which took him to Venice, Rome, and Naples.
His impressions of Italy found musical expression in his fourth symphony, now universally known as the “Italian” symphony. Commentators have found a range of Italian scenes in the symphony. Perhaps the busy first movement recalls the bustle of Venice, and perhaps the second, with its gravity and stateliness recalls the religious processions he experienced in Rome during Holy Week. What is a little more definite is that the fourth movement is built around two characteristic Italian folk dance forms, the Saltarello and the Tarantella, which latter references the legend that the sting of the tarantula spider could be cured by frenzied dancing.
Conductor Leslie Olive says, “The Italian Symphony is a great symphony for a newcomer to classical orchestral music.”