Off to Italy! If not in person, you can at least escape the grey of Berlin for a while with the Konzerthausorchester, Joana Mallwitz and our former artist in residence violist Antoine Tamestit. First, Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi will take you through picturesque Ligurian villages. The 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn also fell in love with the southern landscape: ‘There is music in it, it sounds and resounds from all sides.’ He wrote to his sister Fanny: ‘In general, composing is now fresh again. The ‘Italian Symphony’ is making great progress; it will be the funniest piece I have written.’ However, the first version was only completed with great effort in the Berlin winter of 1832 - you would never know that from listening! Hector Berlioz travelled through the Abruzzo mountains. Impressions from this tour and inspiration from Byron's poem ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’ resulted in a stylistically unique symphony in which the solo viola seems to embody the thematically rather static traveller, while the orchestra seems to embody the romantic, roaring world, including a serenade to the lover and a description of a robbers' camp.