Italian Serenade 24.9.

Wed 24.9. Paviljonki at 18

Lorenzo Passerini, conductor
Elias Lassfolk, violin

Hugo Wolf: Italian Serenade
Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto 
Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4
  

"I’ll gladly do it over the winter. But it’s not so easy. I suppose it should be brilliant too – how could I ever manage that? The entire first solo on the E string – an opening that won’t leave me alone!"

Felix Mendelssohn’s letter to his friend, violinist Ferdinand David, has gone down in history, for it seems almost unthinkable that Mendelssohn – the child prodigy, the natural fountain of music – could have found composing a violin concerto difficult! Even the finished masterpiece took time to ascend to the top tier of violin concertos, but now that it’s there, it’s impossible not to revel in it. And amid all its virtuosic brilliance, that opening on the E string has rightfully earned its place as one of the greatest earworms of all time.

This is the perfect opportunity for concertmaster Elias Lassfolk to shine, especially with chief conductor Lorenzo Passerini rounding out the evening with works that few could interpret better in our northern latitudes: Mendelssohn’s and his slightly later colleague Hugo Wolf’s Italian Travel Sketches.

Molto bene!