Kartäuserkantorei Köln | Philharmonischer Chor Bonn

The Kartäuserkantorei Köln, the Philharmonische Chor Bonn and the Philharmonische Orchester Hagen tell eerily beautiful stories in this concert.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's »Die erste Walpurgisnacht« (The First Walpurgis Night) tells of druids practising pagan customs and witches riding through the night to the »hellish noise« of the orchestra. Camille Saint-Saëns' macabre Dance of Death is the accompanying music to a secret meeting of a pair of lovers who are not allowed to love each other – played by Death himself at midnight in a cemetery. Hugo Wolf set to music a gruesome poem by Edurard Mörike, in which the skeleton of a fire rider is found at the end, and in Franz Liszt's work, the solemn »Glocken des Straßburger Münsters« (bells of Strasbourg Cathedral) ring out before a dramatic confrontation between the devil and an angel takes place.