On 3 and 4 December, Patrick Hahn debuts with Bamberger Symphoniker accompanying cellist Sol Gabetta.

The programme starts with American composer George Crumb’s ethereal God-Music taken from the string quartet Black Angels composed in 1970 in response to the Vietnam War where an electrically amplified cello is accompanied by crystal glasses creating an otherworldly effect. Britten likewise conceived his Sinfonia da Requiem of 1940 as a mass for the dead and an anti-war statement – a confessional work with a Christian programme and a prevailing mood of tragedy that requires the orchestra to muster elemental forces.

When Elgar wrote his famous Cello Concerto in 1919, he was mourning the end that World War I had put to a seemingly perfect world. Wagner’s opera drama Tristan und Isolde, which premiered in 1865, delves into deep psychological tensions, joy and sorrow, love and death: a night of passion seals Tristan and Isolde’s fate. In 1908, Scriabin used stupendous orchestral effects to create a veritable ecstasy of sound, into which a quotation from a socialist revolutionary song is interwoven, giving euphoric expression to the uprising of the oppressed masses.