Abstract
In the final chamber concert of this season, members of the Orchestra of the Zurich Opera House present two major works of the Romantic repertoire. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat major, op. 87, composed in the summer of 1845 during a stay in Bad Soden in the Taunus, reveals a remarkable expressive range between buoyant lyricism and dramatic lament. Johannes Brahms at one time intended his String Quintet No. 2 in G major to be his last published composition. The work thus appears as a completely unsentimental retrospective – and at the same time as one of the composer’s most richly contrasting creations.