A Tragic Programme

There is always a sense of occasion when an orchestra, usually confined to the dungeons of the theatre pit, is pulled up from its natural habitat and into the spotlight of the concert hall. Lothar Koenigs had designed a programme for this occasion [28 October 2011, Welsh National Opera, St David's Hall, Cardiff, UK], engineered to stir the emotions of opera and orchestral followers alike. Here were three pieces grouped together in their combined endeavour to find hope in the darkest hours of the human experience.

Friedrich Rückert, the great German poet and oriental scholar, lost his children to an epidemic of scarlet fever...