Palace concert with the Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Orchestra
Program:
Wilhelm Heinrich Berwald - Danse fantastique and Intermezzo romantique for large orchestra
Georg Alois Schmitt - Overture to the incidental music to Calderon's The Steadfast Prince
Robert Alfred Kirchner - Intrata ed Allegro
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - Symphony No. 4 in A major op. 90 Italian
The Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle invites you to a concert in the atmospheric inner courtyard of Schwerin Castle and brings the walls, which have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since summer 2024, to life with a summery, romantic program. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's cheerful 4th Symphony will be performed as part of the 2026 Castle Festival: the "Italian" - a work that fits the romantic atmosphere of this special place like no other.
In 1830, Mendelssohn asked the great Goethe in Weimar for travel tips for Italy and then spent six months following in his footsteps through "the land where the lemons bloom". He collected impressions that stayed with him and used them to compose his "Italian" symphony. It comes across like a musical travel diary: mostly lively and spirited, full of light and southern joie de vivre, only interspersed here and there with tender moments of melancholy and melancholy.
Mendelssohn's symphony can unfold its special effect in the inner courtyard of Schwerin Castle: The neo-Renaissance architecture forms an ideal resonance chamber for this music. The columns, the finely ornamented façades and the almost fairytale-like silhouette of the castle - all of which spring from a longing for classical harmony and southern elegance - enter into a lively dialog with Mendelssohn's sound world on this evening.
The first part of the concert is dedicated to composers who are connected to Schwerin Castle in different ways - whether through their origins or their work on site. We will hear a work by Wilhelm Heinrich Berwald, born in Schwerin in 1864, who emigrated to the USA after studying in Munich and Stuttgart and gained great recognition there as a professor, composer and orchestra conductor at Syracuse University. There will also be music by Georg Alois Schmitt, who shaped Schwerin's musical life as court conductor from 1856 to 1892. The program concludes with Robert Alfred Kirchner, who joined the Schwerin court orchestra in 1907 and helped shape the orchestra for decades - right up until the Second World War - both as principal second violin and as a composer.
