The tongs and the bones: Vivid Mendelssohn from Gardiner and the LSO

Mendelssohn: LSO/Gardiner ****

rackham-dreamBarbican Hall, 16th February 2016

Recapturing one’s youth is a favourite preoccupation of thirty-somethings. Few recaptured it quite as vivaciously as Felix Mendelssohn. Sixteen years after composing his A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture – all gossamer wings and braying donkeys – he brilliantly rolled back the years to recreate that same fairyland in his incidental music to Shakespeare’s play. I suspect I’ll hear this miraculous score many times in this 400th anniversary year of The Bard’s death (two further opportunities present themselves in the next ten days!) but I doubt I’ll hear it better played than the LSO under Sir John Eliot Gardiner in this Mendelssohnian feast.

Read the full review on Bachtrack.

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