Fidelio Orchestra: Fragments of a Vanished World

Romain Rolland wrote of Camille Saint-Säens in 1908 that ‘he brings into the midst of our modern restlessness something of sweetness and clarity of past periods, something that feels like fragments of a vanished world.’ This programme of three very unrelated pieces shows the last grandiose accomplishments of the passing romantic generation.

Margarita Balanas plays Saint-Säens’s Cello Concerto No 1 on the very same instrument which was built for the premiere of this piece. In what feels like a one-movement fantasy for cello and orchestra, the initial tune and his off-beat rhythm keep returning after several gracefully peaceful melodies are introduced. This piece was admired by some, including Serge Rachmaninoff, to be the best concerto for the cello ever written.

Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is a symphonic poem that the composer reworked three times before producing the version usually performed in the repertoire. Bringing together sonata form, orchestral virtuosity and contrasting sections, Tchaikovsky frames the love scene in a complex and foreboding context, that seems to make love doomed from the beginning.

The closing piece, Mahler’s epic last movement from his third symphony, is hardly ever performed on its own, despite its appeal for both orchestras and audiences. Mahler had originally annotated the movement with the title ‘What love tells me’, later removed. In this piece we hear something similar to what Romain Rolland was talking about, sweetness and clarity that seem to overcome the jarring restlessness of the advancing technological revolution.