Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, op. 56, the "Scottish", played by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its principal conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Recorded live at the Kölner Philharmonie on February 26, 2021.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - Symphony No. 3 in A minor op. 56 "Scottish".
00:00:00 I. Andante con moto - Allegro un poco agitato
00:17:35 II. Vivace non troppo
00:21:59 III. adagio
00:32:04 IV. Allegro vivacissimo - Allegro maestoso assai
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Cristian Măcelaru, conductor
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○ Introduction to the works
Where did true romantics vacation in the 19th century? In the Scottish Highlands, of course! James Macpherson's Ossian sagas and the works of the Scottish poet Walter Scott inspired them. The 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was also drawn there after his extremely successful concert season as a conductor and pianist in London in 1829. With his friend Karl Klingemann, they set out in the summer to explore the fabled Highlands. They also stopped off in Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, and at Holyrood Castle. A place with a dark past: Queen Mary Stuart had once resided here. And it was here that her opponents had bestially murdered private secretary David Rizzio in 1566 - before her very eyes. It was on this day, in this place, that he found the beginning of his "Scottish Symphony," Mendelssohn wrote to his family in Berlin.
But it was not until more than 12 years later that he put the project into practice. His Symphony in A minor, completed in January 1842, is counted today as his third, but is actually his last. In his review, Robert Schumann praised the formal density of the work; it formed "a tightly interwoven whole". Sublime and epic in gesture, as befits a Romantic symphony, it is innovative above all because of its distinctly lyrical style: Mendelssohn Bartholdy works with poetic song themes, "songs without words". Song structures characterize the entire symphony. Although the "Scottish" does not have a specific program, it is permeated with Scottish color. This is audible, for example, in the bagpipe sounds of the second movement or in the ballad-like tone of the beginning of the symphony: "Once upon a time in distant times" the music seems to want to articulate here. Associations with a gloomy Scottish landscape with ruined walls and submerged stories arise as if by magic - also in the eerie storm music at the end of the first movement.
(Text: Verena Großkreutz)