Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream

A delightfully dreamy program announcing summer in all its facets. The main part consists of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but don't forget Debussy's brooding cantata La damoiselle élue. A magnificent ode to women for orchestra, women's choir, soprano and mezzo-soprano.

Sultry summer breeze

At the age of seventeen, Mendelssohn wrote his famous Overture A Midsummer Night's Dream. Some sixteen years later, when he composed the music for a performance of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, he included the overture in it. As if nothing had happened in the intervening years, the whole thing sounds so organic. Yet the Overture remains one of the composer's most distinctive works. A work captured by a sultry summer breeze.

Erotically charged

Debussy was heavily influenced by dreamy symbolism when he completed his cantata La damoiselle élue in 1888. One reviewer wrote of the erotically charged work after its premiere, "Debussy's taste is so graceful and refined that all his audacity is welcome.