Many music lovers have taken Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto into their hearts as the most beautiful violin concerto in existence. When Noa Wildschut performs this magnificent work with the NNO, it may certainly be called a World Class concert. For Noa may still be young, but she has by now more than earned her spurs in the international music scene.

Mendelssohn wrote his Violin Concerto for Ferdinand David, the violinist who, at his request, became concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig after Mendelssohn himself had become its conductor. He also appointed him to teach violin at the Leipzig Conservatory, which was founded in 1843 on Mendelssohn’s initiative.

The Norwegian Edvard Grieg received his training at this conservatory. In 1898, he wrote his Symphonic Dances, in which Grieg united Norwegian folk and dance music and Western art music in a similar way that the Czech Antonín Dvořák had previously done in his famous Slavonic Dances.