We're bringing Italy to Dortmund, because it's not only in Berlin that winter is long and gray! The programme of our guest performance begins with a turbulent Rossini overture.

This is followed by a classic, which we owe to the fact that 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn fell deeply in love with the landscape of the south: “There is music in it, it resounds and sounds from all sides.” He wrote to his sister Fanny: “In general, composing is now fresh again. The 'Italian Symphony' is making great progress; it will be the funniest piece I have written.” However, the first version was only completed with great effort in the Berlin winter of 1832 - you really can't hear it!

Hector Berlioz wandered through Abruzzo. Impressions of this tour and inspiration from Byron's poem “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage” resulted in a stylistically unique symphony in which the solo viola seems to embody the thematically introspective wanderer, while the orchestra seems to embody the romantic, roaring world, including a serenade to the lover and a robber's camp.