Orches­ter der Ko­mi­schen Oper Ber­lin @Choriner Musik­sommer

César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns provided decisive impulses for the revival of symphonic music and symphonic poetry in France beyond their lifetimes.

With Le chasseur maudit (The Wild Hunter), César Franck created program music par excellence based on the ballad of the same name by Gottfried August Bürger. A wild hunter is cursed and rides through the countryside at night with a retinue of dead men. In his D minor Symphony, Franck, like Brahms or Dvořák, is working on rethinking symphonic music after Beethoven.

The performance of the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 1 makes it clear that Camille Saint-Saens cannot be reduced to the Carnival of the Animals. As a showpiece of classical cello literature, it has its place in concert life, despite Saint-Saëns' aesthetic stance that “music exists on its own and independently of any emotion”.