Anna Clyne

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is a musical firework, with dazzling cascades of chords and ultra-fast runs across the full register of the piano. At this concert, those rockets are fired off by acclaimed British pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason. Felix Mendelssohn was only seventeen years old when he composed his wonderfully bright and quick-paced overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is nevertheless considered one of his first mature masterpieces. The action in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream revolves around masculinity, femininity, love and fertility. And even if Felix’ own experiences in the area were probably relatively limited, he conveys in this music the emotional register that Shakespeare presents in his beloved comedy. The concert concludes with the Confession of Isobel Gowdie by Scottish composer James MacMillan (born 1959). The music revolves around Isobel Gowdie, who confessed to witchcraft in 1662. The work was an enormous success at its world premiere at a Proms concert in 1990.