REFORMATIONS SINFONIE

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy wrote his so-called “Reformation Symphony” in 1830, for the three hundred year anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the profession of faith of the Lutheran churches and communities, that still applies today. He had already been carrying around his musings about arranging the Lutheran hymn “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” symphonically for some time. For this work, the composer created a symphonic model, which on the one hand emulated Beethoven, and on the other hand reached far into the future in terms of its conceptual disposition. The formal structure of the symphony stringently leads to the daring and monumental last movement – an extravagant choral arrangement of “A mighty fortress is our God.” Before this powerful finale, the first three movements seem as if they were preludes. With the version on this release, arranged by Torsten Sterzik, the work had a musical and textual extension bestowed upon it, which proceeds very sensitively, and hardly influe