RCO: Christmas Matinee with Klaus Mäkelä

Klaus Mäkelä conducts the RCO's Christmas Matinee on Monday, 25 December 2023, including Beethoven’s Eroica and and works by no less than two Mendelssohns.

Klaus Mäkelä conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s Christmas Matinee on Monday, 25 December 2023. This festive tradition has been a landmark of the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s season for almost fifty years. The Concertgebouw Orchestra’s future chief conductor will conduct Beethoven’s magnificent Third Symphony, the "Eroica", and works by no less than two Mendelssohns. Felix Mendelssohn’s popular overture, "The Hebrides", will grace the programme, along with his rarely performed concert aria, "Infélice". The superb soloist, Chen Reiss, will sing "Hero und Leander" the ‘dramatic scene,’ by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, a composer whose music has started to posthumously emerge from the shadow of her famous brother, Felix. In fact, this will be the first time the Concertgebouw Orchestra performs one of her works; attention to her lush style of composition is therefore long overdue. ‘We wanted to form one composition using the works by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn,’ says Klaus Mäkelä.

Program:
Felix Mendelssohn: The Hebrides (Fingal's cave)
Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn: Hero und Leander
Felix Mendelssohn: Scherzo from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Felix Mendelssohn: Infelice
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 'Eroica'