Freiburg Baroque Orchestra: Schubert and Rossini

Program:
Franz Schubert
Overture in D major "in the Italian style" D 590
Symphony No. 8 in C major "Great" D 944

Gioachino Rossini
Cantata "La morte di Didone"

Julie Fuchs, soprano
Collegium Vocale Gent
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor

In the first half of the 19th century, it was "Viva Rossini!" all over Europe, who became a box office hit with his rousing and lively operas. Gioachino Rossini not only wrote operas, but was also active in all genres. He also left behind over 20 cantatas, including La morte di Didone, which can certainly be regarded as an "opera in miniature".

The fame of the Italian master was also heard in Vienna and none other than Franz Schubert was inspired by Rossini for his overture in D major "in the Italian style", which provided a good dose of Italianità on the Danube with its lightness and temperament. Schubert then took a different path in his "great" Symphony No. 8 in C major. While the D major overture is dominated by energetic affects, the symphony is characterized by great expansiveness, wide-ranging melodies and complex elaborations. All this makes the symphony a work of epochal proportions, for which Pablo Heras-Casado is the ideal interpreter with his powerful and precise conducting.