Romantic Classicists / Classical Romantics Subscription series concert

About the programme

Prelude and Fugue: that makes one think of Johann Sebastian Bach. But of Ludwig van Beethoven? He indeed wrote a prelude for string quintet in his older age. Its fugue remained a fragment, which Beethoven later replaced with a new fugue. And already we have a prelude with fugue, created in 1817.

Camille Saint-Saëns also looks to the past when he, in 1892, wrote several dances in the old style, like the dreamily flowing Sarabande. They were intended to complement Saint-Saëns' new edition of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Comédie ballet, based on Molière's Le malade imaginaire.

Complement or not? Yves Gérard's catalogue of Boccherini's cello concertos lists eleven. With the Cello Concerto in A Major G 475: voilà, a twelfth! For Steven Isserlis, new Artistic Partner of CAMERATA BERN and a self-confessed fan, it is clearly the best Boccherini: "distinguished and amiable", as he says.

And a second cello concerto sails through this programme. Bach's son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, is that at its finest: the orchestra, surging; the solo voice, noble, and not thrown off track for a second by the youthful exuberance of the tutti.

Youthfulness and noblesse, then—both together in Mendelssohn. In his Second String Quintet in B-Flat major, traditionally classical forms capture its effervescent fantasy. The best of both worlds.