One of the first events of the 2026/2027 season at the NFM will be Felix Mendelssohn’s magnum opus, the oratorio Elijah. Alongside distinguished soloists, the NFM Choir and the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra – ensembles founded by Maestro Andrzej Kosendiak, currently celebrating their 20th anniversaries – will participate. World-renowned conductor David Reiland will take over the baton from artistic directors Lionel Sow and Jarosław Thiel.

A year after taking office as director of the Wrocław Philharmonic, Andrzej Kosendiak founded two ensembles, the absence of which was sorely felt in the musical community of the capital of Lower Silesia. Since 2015, the NFM Choir and Wrocław Baroque Orchestra have resided in the “space for beauty” – the NFM. To celebrate their 20th anniversaries, the artists will present a monumental and festive work, a masterpiece of Protestant oratorio, premiered in August 1846 in Birmingham, England.

Mendelssohn, fascinated by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions from a young age, intended to restore the music of his adopted faith to the splendour it enjoyed thanks to his great predecessor. England, ever in love with George Frideric Handel’s then almost century-old oratorios, such as The Messiah, eagerly welcomed the German artists. Taking the works of both these masters, which he knew well as a conductor, as models, the composer of the Italian Symphony worked on the Elijah for ten years. His oratorio consists of recitatives, arias, and choruses, as well as several dramatised scenes. The plot, clearly presented in two parts and accessibly arranged musically, covers the biblical story of the prophet Elijah, known to us from Kings 1 and 2: the scourge of drought, his being fed by ravens, the resurrection of a widow’s son, challenging the prophets of Baal to bring down God’s fire, his escape from Queen Jezebel to the holy Mount Horeb, and his ascension to  heaven in a fiery chariot. In addition to texts about the prophet’s life, the librettist used other passages from the Bible – primarily the Psalms. A reviewer for The Times summed up the premiere as follows: “Never has there been a fuller triumph.” We are sure you can expect similar experiences during this concert.