Hope Metropolitan Orchestra - Romantic Heights

Hope Metropolitan Orchestra — Stephen Pratt, Conductor
Daniella Sicari, Soprano

Wagner – Siegfried Idyll
Mahler – Four Songs from Das Knaben Wunderhorn:
Wer hat dies Liedel erdacht? (1892)
Rheinlegendchen (1893)
Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen (1898)
Verlorne Müh’! (1892)
Schumann – Symphony No. 4

This concert highlights three “progressive” Romantic composers: Schumann, Wagner and Mahler.

Schumann first aimed to be a composer-pianist, but a hand injury pushed him towards full-time composition. His Fourth Symphony, drafted in 1841 and revised in 1851, is notable for its four uninterrupted movements and the thematic links woven across the work.

Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll is one of music’s most remarkable gifts. Written for his wife Cosima after the birth of their son Siegfried, it was first performed on Christmas Day 1870 at their villa in Tribschen, Switzerland, by players from the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich—whose conductor, Hans Richter, reportedly learned trumpet especially for the occasion.

While Wagner expanded the orchestra’s dramatic power in opera, Mahler carried that scale and colour into the concert hall. Yet alongside his vast symphonies, his Das Knaben Wunderhorn songs reveal a simpler, folk-inspired voice. Written between 1892 and 1898 and based on early 19th-century texts, the four featured tonight show Mahler at his most intimate and playful.