Mendelssohn, Strauss

Two distant worlds come together in this concert evening: the youthful Mendelssohn’s pure and vibrant Romanticism, and Richard Strauss’s ironic and wise orchestral “tale.” Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto in D minor is a rare early work, originally written for violin, piano, and strings, and performed here in its orchestral version.

In the second half, Kelemen Barnabás conducts Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Don Quixote, inspired by the world’s first modern novel. Cervantes’s hero and Sancho Panza come to life through a series of variations, in scenes that are by turns grotesque and deeply moving, while the cello — performed by Dóra Kokas — becomes the voice of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. It is a rare occasion when virtuosity, humor, and poetic imagination meet so naturally within a single evening.

The concert is presented in collaboration with the Budapest Italian Cultural Institute.