Hope Metropolitan Orchestra: Romantic Heights

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NB: This concert takes place in the Great Hall, Liverpool Hope University Creative Campus, 17 Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP.

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Hope Metropolitan Orchestra, Stephen Pratt Conductor
Daniella Sicari, Soprano

Wagner - Siegfried Idyll
Mahler - 4 Songs from Das Knaben Wunderhorn
Wer hat dies Liedel erdacht? (1892)
Rheinlegendchen (1893)
Wo die schönen trompeten blasen (1898)
Verlorne Müh’! (1892)
Schumann - Symphony No. 4.

This concert celebrates the work of three ‘progressive’ composers of the Romantic period - Schumann, Wagner and Mahler. 

Schumann’s initial ambition was to be a ‘composer-pianist’, but a chronic problem with his right hand thwarted this and he turned exclusively to composition, with his orchestral output coming a little later at the age of 31. His 4th symphony was initially written after his first symphony in 1841, but extensively rewritten and published in 1851. Notable innovations include all four movements being played without a break, and the linking of themes across different movements.

As Christmas presents go, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll sets the bar quite high. Composed as a birthday gift for his second wife Cosima following the birth of their son Siegfried in 1868, the piece received its first performance on Christmas day, 1870 in the couple’s villa in Tribschen in Switzerland. A group of players from the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich performed on the stairs of the villa, with their principal conductor Hand Richter reportedly having learned to play the trumpet for the event. 

Whilst Wagner is credited with having extended the size and expressive scope of the orchestra in the world of opera, Mahler took these innovations into the concert hall. His symphonies are renowned for their epic qualities. That said, there was also a folksy, less intense side to the composer and the 14 songs written under the title of Das Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) offer an excellent example. Composed between 1892-1898, the four we will hear in the concert are all written for a mezzo-soprano and have folk-song like texts, taken from an early C19th collection.