Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra Mendelssohn Cycle Unofficial

The works to be performed in the second concert are all youthful works written when he was around 20 years old. The Piano Concerto No. 1 is a confident work that he himself performed as piano soloist at an important concert in London to great acclaim. The symphony "Italia" is full of sparkling, "very Italian" images. In fact, it was conceived during a trip to Italy, and he wrote the following letter to his family regarding the part of the symphony that was to be depicted in the fourth movement: "Oras Vernet (Oras Vernet). You should see how Orasse Vernet (director of the French Academy in Italy and painter) and his daughter Louise dance the Saltarello. When she stopped dancing, quickly picked up a tambourine and started tapping it, instantly taking over the clapping we were doing, I wished I had been a painter. If I had been a painter, I think I would have painted wonderful pictures." Of course, Mendelssohn, who was not a painter, painted this scene in his work.

The other symphony, "Reformation," opens with Luther's famous chorale, "The Firmament," sung by the flutes in the fourth movement, and the music expands magnificently from there. The "Fortress" was very popular at the time, and it is recorded that at the Gutenberg Festival in 1840, for example, it was sung in a chorus in the Leipzig square and "everyone was very moved" by it. The work is full of festive atmosphere.