When the Bergmann Duo take the stage together with Jasper Wood and Sungyong Lim on Thursday, October 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Matsqui Centennial Auditorium, they will open their program with an arrangement of the Hebrides Overture by Felix Mendelssohn.
Mendelssohn made ten trips to England, a country he came to love deeply. On his first trip in 1829 as a twenty-year-old, he made a holiday expedition north to Scotland. The trip impressed him profoundly and inspired two of his more popular works.
He visited Fingal’s Cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa in a rowboat. Despite becoming seasick, he was moved to jot down notes that became the Hebrides Overture which he published four years later. Other notes from his hikes in the rugged countryside became the first sixteen bars of his Symphony No. 3 known as the Scottish. That was not written and published until 1843.
By that time he had made friends with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They both loved music and were competent pianists and singers. When they heard his Scottish Symphony, they were enraptured. In response, Mendelssohn created a simplified version of the symphony as a piano duet that they could play and enjoy after he had gone.
This practice of arranging big orchestral works for small groups of instruments was very popular in 19th century Europe. Carl Burchard and Friedrich Hermann wrote numerous such orchestral reductions. This is the inspiration for the concert next Thursday which will include similar arrangements of several Hungarian Dances by Brahms and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Tickets for this performance are available online at www.valleyconcertsociety.com at $32 for adults and $20 for students. Call 604-289-3377 for more information.
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Marcel and Elizabeth Bergmann will be featured on This is My Music, a two-hour program on CBC Radio Two, 105.7 FM, on Saturday morning, September 27, at 10 a.m.
They will share music that has been meaningful to them along with anecdotes from their lives. I’m told a sneak preview will stream at this link beginning Friday morning. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-382-this-is-my-music .
John Wiebe -President
The Valley Concert Society