A Midsummer Night's Dream - Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809 - 1847) composed the music for William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream at two different times. In 1826, at the age of 16, he wrote a concert overture (Op. 21). Sixteen years later, in 1842, he composed the incidental music (opus 61) for King Frederick William IV of Prussia, in which he incorporated the existing overture. The overture premiered in Stettin (then in Prussia, now Szczecin, Poland) on February 20, 1827, conducted by Carl Loewe. Mendelssohn had to travel 80 miles through a raging snowstorm to get to the concert, which became his first public appearance. The first British performance of the overture was conducted by Mendelssohn himself on June 24, 1829, at the Argyll Rooms in London. After the concert, Thomas Attwood was given the score of the overture for safekeeping, but left it in a taxi and was never found. Mendelssohn later rewrote the overture entirely from memory.

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