Another legendary virtuoso who will share the stage with the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra this season is Antje Weithaas. Last year, she received the OPUS Klassik award – the most prestigious German distinction in classical music. With the orchestra, the artist will perform Mieczysław Weinberg’s Concertino and conduct two string quartets arranged for orchestra. These will be works by Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven, both written at the ends of their respective composers’ lives.

The German virtuoso has performed with the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra on numerous occasions, most recently in 2019. She has recorded the complete violin sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven with Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon. Music critics have praised Weithaas’s imaginative performance, her humbleness towards art, and her ability to collaborate with orchestras while remaining free as a soloist. It is precisely this quality that makes us look forward to the concert in which the violinist will lead the Wrocław orchestra.

The first performance will be the Quartet in F minor, completed in the final weeks of Mendelssohn’s life. Compared to the rest of his oeuvre, it is an exceptionally turbulent piece, full of dissonances. It expressed Felix’s devastation following the death of his sister Fanny, also a composer. Both died in 1847. Just over a hundred years later, Mieczysław Weinberg completed his Concertino. This Soviet composer was a Pole of Jewish descent. His three-movement work is the most cheerful and accessible element of the programme, despite being written in the wake of the historical turmoil that brought Weinberg to Moscow.

After intermission, the musicians will perform one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s famous late string quartets, steeped in the legend of his prophetic genius. The Quartet in C sharp minor consists of seven movements, including a fugue, a tarantella, a recitative, extended variations that are a world unto themselves, a peculiar intermezzo, and a sonata-like finale. The work is known for its pioneering thematic integration and formal transparency. It is an intellectual feast, or rather, an invitation to a place where emotion and intellect blend into one...