Orchester der Komischen Oper Berlin @Choriner Musiksommer

With Le chasseur maudit (The Wild Hunter), César Franck created program music par excellence based on the ballad of the same name by Gottfried August Bürger. A wild hunter is cursed and rides through the countryside at night with a retinue of dead men. In his D minor Symphony, Franck, like Brahms or Dvořák, is working on rethinking symphonic music after Beethoven.


The performance of the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 1 makes it clear that Camille Saint-Saens cannot be reduced to the Carnival of the Animals. As a showpiece of classical cello literature, it has its place in concert life, despite Saint-Saëns' aesthetic stance that “music exists on its own and independently of any emotion”.