Orchester der Komischen Oper Berlin

César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns set decisive impulses for the revival of symphony and symphonic poetry in France beyond their lifetimes. César Franck created program music par excellence with Le chasseur maudit (The Wild Hunter), based on the ballad of the same name by Gottfried August Bürger. A wild hunter is cursed and has since ridden through the country at night with a retinue of dead people. In his Symphony in D minor, Franck, like Brahms or Dvořák, works on rethinking symphonies after Beethoven. With the performance of the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 1, it becomes clear that Camille Saint-Saëns cannot be reduced to the Carnival of the Animals. As a showpiece of classical cello literature, it has its place in concert life, despite Saint-Saëns' aesthetic position that music exists of itself and independent of any emotion.