Cosmopolitan |Mendelssohn

A widely travelled cosmopolitan, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is a fixed star on the horizon of the 19th-century musical world. Not only did he exchange ideas with numerous important personalities of Europe’s cultural scene, but provided crucial impulses as a versatile musician and influential intellectual. Sketches from his journeys and his correspondences of great literary value give an impression of the diverse nature of Mendelssohn’s Europe. Performing compositions and arrangements for string orchestra by Mendelssohn’s contemporaries Hector Berlioz, Gaetano Donizetti, Niels W. Gade, and Robert Volkmann, as well as a mature work by the young Mendelssohn himself, Peter Bruns and the Mendelssohn Kammerorchester offer a sonic panorama of diverse, idiomatic personal and national styles. They present a kaleidoscope of compositional expression and invite listeners to join them on a journey into the sound world with which Mendelssohn, the globetrotter, would have been familiar.