Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is one of the few Romantic composers to be happily married. To mark the beginning of his union with his beloved Cécile, he set the psalm of “The Stag Who Cries for Water” to music on their 1837 honeymoon through Alsace and the Black Forest. The self-critical composer was very pleased with the piece. His friend and admirer Robert Schumann even considered it Mendelssohn's best church music ever, and concert audiences were impressed: Even during Mendelssohn's lifetime, the psalm was performed very frequently—almost as often as the homage to 400 years since the invention of the printing press. The commission for that piece came from the Leipzig Gutenberg Festival, and Mendelssohn immediately invented a new musical genre—the fusion of symphony and cantata. And what does Gutenberg's invention have to do with setting Bible texts to music? It's an equation: the invention of the printing press also paints the poetic image of the hymn, the evolution from darkness to light.
Tickets are CHF 32-95 for adults and half price for youths and students.

Website
kammerorchesterbasel.ch/de/konzerte/lobgesang.html

Where
Stadtcasino Basel
Konzertgasse 1
4051 Basel

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