Narcissus, the Thespian hunter who fell in love with his own image, inspired Matthias Pintscher to compose his own reflection on ‘the interaction of different groups and their mirror images’, a work for cello and orchestra. Pintscher conducts Reflections on Narcissus here before a semi-staged performance of Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Mendelssohn’s delicate, mercurial and strident music is interspersed with excerpts from Shakespeare’s text to form a centrepiece of this season’s celebrations of Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary.