Delirium

In the organizer's words:

Was it the move from Dresden to the Rhineland, the new position as music director in Düsseldorf, the audience there that greeted him enthusiastically? Robert Schumann certainly seems to have been in a kind of creative delirium when he put his cello concerto on paper in barely two weeks in 1850: not a bravura high-wire act, not a self-portrayal of the soloist as the lion tamer of his instrument, but a composition full of magic and narrative power, certainly also clouded by dark shadows ... Premonitions of future emotional catastrophes in the composer's life? The young cellist Anastasia Kobekina is a graduate of the Kronberg Academy, with which the Gürzenich Orchestra is continuing its cooperation this season. Anastasia Kobekina is now touring all over the world, and the newspaper "Le Figaro" described her succinctly as an "incomparable musician" - an ideal choice for one of the most intimate, profound cello concertos of the Romantic period.

The first draft of Schumann's Second Symphony was also written as if in a fever: it was completed after just 16 days, but the final draft took considerably longer. Schumann was in a deep crisis at the time, having suffered a mental and physical breakdown. He later described how he experienced relief and healing through the work on his Second: "I wrote the symphony in December 1845 while still ill; I feel as if I had to listen to it. [...] In the last movement I began to feel well again."

Program

Robert Schumann
Overture to Manfred op. 115
1848-52

Concerto for violoncello and orchestra in A minor op. 129
1850

Symphony No. 2 in C major op. 61
1845-46

Instrumentation

Anastasia Kobekina Violoncello
Riccardo Minasi Conductor

Price information:

Tickets for young adults for €8 Prices €60/48/38/26/20/12