Post by erik on May 15, 2021 18:18:30 GMT -5
A trip that Felix Mendelssohn made to Scotland inspired the work in this week's Classical Works Spotlight, in a performance by a regional orchestra in Southern California.
Mendelssohn: HEBRIDES OVERTURE (FINGAL’S CAVE), OP. 26
As a young composer who, like both Mozart and Schubert, was not fated to live a particularly long life, Felix Mendelssohn put a fair amount of traveling throughout Europe during his short time in the world. That traveling, which would result in his Scottish and Italian symphonies being created, also led him to compose a stand-alone concert overture, the Hebrides Overture. The work came about as the result of a visit he made to the British Isles in 1829. Following the tour he made of England at the request of Sir George Smart and the Philharmonic Society of London, he ventured further north to Scotland; and it was there, on the adjacent island of Staffa, that he encountered a basalt sea cave known as Fingal’s Cave. The consistent barrage of the waves of the North Sea, and the beauty, solitude, and loneliness of the landscape around the cave was what inspired him to create this ten minute-long concert overture, which presages the symphonic tone poems of Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss, and many of the so-called “impressionist” works of Claude Debussy that were still some six decades away. Although cast in the somewhat “gloomy” key of B Minor, the Hebrides Overture, which eventually came with the subtitle of “Fingal’s Cave”, gives one the impression of the austere quality of the landscape Mendelssohn saw and how vivid even an overcast Scottish day can seem. Requiring only a standard orchestra of the time (no trombones), the Hebrides Overture became a significant concert favorite during the composer’s lifetime; and it has maintained that status in international concert halls and on recordings ever since.
Long Beach Symphony Orchestra/JOANN FALLETTA (Albany)
Included (Impressions Of The Sea):
Debussy: LA MER
Liadov: THE ENCHANTED LAKE
Debussy: THE SUNKEN CATHEDRAL
Frank Bridge: THE SEA
Mendelssohn: HEBRIDES OVERTURE (FINGAL’S CAVE), OP. 26
As a young composer who, like both Mozart and Schubert, was not fated to live a particularly long life, Felix Mendelssohn put a fair amount of traveling throughout Europe during his short time in the world. That traveling, which would result in his Scottish and Italian symphonies being created, also led him to compose a stand-alone concert overture, the Hebrides Overture. The work came about as the result of a visit he made to the British Isles in 1829. Following the tour he made of England at the request of Sir George Smart and the Philharmonic Society of London, he ventured further north to Scotland; and it was there, on the adjacent island of Staffa, that he encountered a basalt sea cave known as Fingal’s Cave. The consistent barrage of the waves of the North Sea, and the beauty, solitude, and loneliness of the landscape around the cave was what inspired him to create this ten minute-long concert overture, which presages the symphonic tone poems of Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss, and many of the so-called “impressionist” works of Claude Debussy that were still some six decades away. Although cast in the somewhat “gloomy” key of B Minor, the Hebrides Overture, which eventually came with the subtitle of “Fingal’s Cave”, gives one the impression of the austere quality of the landscape Mendelssohn saw and how vivid even an overcast Scottish day can seem. Requiring only a standard orchestra of the time (no trombones), the Hebrides Overture became a significant concert favorite during the composer’s lifetime; and it has maintained that status in international concert halls and on recordings ever since.
Long Beach Symphony Orchestra/JOANN FALLETTA (Albany)
Included (Impressions Of The Sea):
Debussy: LA MER
Liadov: THE ENCHANTED LAKE
Debussy: THE SUNKEN CATHEDRAL
Frank Bridge: THE SEA