RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra
Nathalie Stutzmann conductor
Daniel Lozakovich violin

Berlioz La damnation de Faust:
Will-o-the-Wisps
Dance of the Sylphs
Rákóczy March / 14’
Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 / 24’
Schumann Symphony No. 3 (‘Rhenish’) / 32’

Principal Guest Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann returns this season, with the ‘perfect mastery, exceptional talent’ (Le Figaro) of the young Swedish violin virtuoso Daniel Lozakovich, for a thrilling trio of classic 19th-century scores: a ‘dramatic legend’ rendered with French flair and feeling, one of the most popular violin concertos of all time and a last symphony full of spontaneous joy and wonder.

The greatest theatrical tragedy of its age, Goethe’s Faust haunted Hector Berlioz’s imagination for two decades. Three striking orchestral passages – the delightfully nimble and airy ‘Will-o-the-Wisps’, lilting ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ and ebullient ‘Rákóczy March’ showpiece – point to the brilliance of his légende dramatique.

More than a century and a half after its premiere, Bruch’s First (of three) Violin Concertos remains his most popular work. And for very good reasons. It is, after all, a masterpiece, opening in coyly sweet quiet, ending with a rousing, Hungarian-accented flourish impossible to resist and distinguished by some of the most fiendishly difficult writing for violin as it wrestles with the orchestra to emerge above it with brittle lark-song brilliance and beauty.

Joyful and spontaneous, Schumann’s Third Symphony, the ‘Rhenish’, pays glorious tribute to the landscape and legends that surround the mighty Rhine River and culminates in the magisterial solemnity of a mass celebrated in Cologne’s twin-spired medieval cathedral. It is Schumann at his most playful, poetic and profound.

Presented by RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra