Sturm und Drang

The first concert of our season celebrates the tempestuous and feverishly emotional movement that swept through music and other artforms between the early 1760s and the early 1780s. The opening work – arguably the finest 18th-century symphony not composed by Haydn or Mozart – is the exquisite Symphony in C minor by Joseph Martin Kraus (known in his time as ‘the Swedish Mozart’), and the concert ends with Haydn’s celebrated ‘Farewell’ Symphony, set in the sombre key of F sharp minor and particularly famed for its theatrical and highly unusual ending. In between, the electrifying Swiss-Belgian soprano Chiara Skerath sings a selection of dramatic and highly-charged arias by Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, Jommelli and Traetta.