Mendelssohn: String Symphony No. 10

Conductor and composer Jörg Widmann leads the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra on this album featuring masterpieces for string orchestra. Felix Mendelssohn is represented by String Symphony No. 10 in B-flat major, which he wrote at the age of 14. It consists of a single movement, in which an Allegro and a Coda follow a lively slow introduction. Widmann's own "Icarus Lament" takes its theme from a poem by Baudelaire: "Consumed by the love of beauty / I do not wish to have the sublime honor / of giving my name to the abyss / that will serve as my grave". On Korngold's Symphonic Serenade Widmann says: "What a piece, full of sparkling magic". In this work we hear dreams of a real or imaginary Vienna at the time of Mahler or Berg: a vision that looks into the future, heartbreaking, but never sentimental.