Dream of Midsummer

Jordi Savall Born on the 1st August 1941 in Igualada (Barcelona province, Spain), Jordi Savall i Bernadet is a cellist, violist, choir director, orchestra leader, and composer. His repertoire spans music dating from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and from the Baroque period until the nineteenth century. Savall was married to the Spanish soprano Montserrat Figueras from 1968 until her death in November 2011, and is the father of Arianna and Ferran Savall; both singers and musicians.

Following a series of acclaimed recordings of 19th-century music including complete cycles of the symphonies by Schubert and Schumann, Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra turn to Felix Mendelssohn.

Continuing his award-winning cycle, Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads the London Symphony Orchestra, his singers and actors through a novel performance of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: this version—performed as part of the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death—makes some cuts to the original movements, in Gardiner's words, ‘removing all of the music relating to the Mechanicals and thus focusing on the world of the fairies and the human lovers.’

LSO Live presents Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s award-winning Mendelssohn series together in its entirety for the first time. Captured over three seasons during critically-acclaimed concerts in the Barbican Hall, this box set offers listeners the definitive account of Gardiner’s unique take on Mendelssohn with the London Symphony Orchestra: a blend between the conductor’s wide-ranging expertise and the Orchestra’s signature sound.

LSO Live presents Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s award-winning Mendelssohn series together in its entirety for the first time. Captured over three seasons during critically-acclaimed concerts in the Barbican Hall, this box set offers listeners the definitive account of Gardiner’s unique take on Mendelssohn with the London Symphony Orchestra: a blend between the conductor’s wide-ranging expertise and the Orchestra’s signature sound.

The overture in E major, Op. 21, was written by Mendelssohn at 17 years and 6 months old (it was finished on 6 August 1826).

Klemperer wurde im schlesischen Breslau als zweites von drei Kindern der Eltern Nathan und Ida Klemperer geboren.

Klemperer’s rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is considered one of the best of the discography, and a summit among Klemperer’s recordings, for the sharp conducting and the incomparable talents of the vocal soloists Heather Harper and Dame Janet Baker.

German conductor Otto Klemperer attended the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt-am-Main, studied violin and piano at the Klindworth-Scharwenka and Stern Conservatories in Berlin, and composition with the German composer Pfitzner. He made his début in Berlin in 1905, where he conducted fifty performances of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, not a work that would now be identified with Klemperer's serious and profoundly personal approach to music. Shortly afterwards, he visited Gustav Mahler in Vienna and impressed the composer by playing a scherzo from a Mahler symphony by memory at the piano. With Mahler's personal recommendation, Klemperer was appointed choirmaster and conductor at the German Opera in Prague.

Continuing his award-winning cycle, Sir John Eliot Gardiner leads the London Symphony Orchestra, his singers and actors through a novel performance of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: this version—performed as part of the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death—makes some cuts to the original movements, in Gardiner's words, ‘removing all of the music relating to the Mechanicals and thus focusing on the world of the fairies and the human lovers.’