Originals

Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances resemble a condensed diary which he might have brought home from his many journeys undertaken in the early 20th century, when he stopped at the inns and farms of remote villages in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, equipped with a phonograph: in search of the true, »pure« folk music, a counterweight to the folklore-inflected art music of his times. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, written shortly before his death, has its very own sound, appearing somewhat removed from earthy concerns. Edvard Grieg, on the other hand, becomes a jester in the guise of a music ethnologist, supposedly reinventing old musical forms »in order to raise long-gone times from their grave for a moment«. Leading from the first desk, Natalie Chee, concertmaster of the Gürzenich Orchestra, takes her colleagues on a journey to the north and east.