Isabelle Faust with the WDR Symphony Orchestra: Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert live from Cologne

Date: Friday, 28 November 2025
Time: 20:00 (local time, GMT+1)
Where: Kölner Philharmonie
Streaming: YouTube – WDR Sinfonieorchester
Link: WDR Symphony Orchestra YouTube channel (opens in a new tab)

Programme:

• Robert Schumann – Die Braut von Messina Overture, op. 100
• Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64
• Robert Schumann – Fantasy in C major for violin and orchestra, op. 131
• Franz Schubert – Symphony No. 7 in B minor, D 759 “Unfinished”

Performers:

• Isabelle Faust, violin
• WDR Symphony Orchestra
• Andrew Manze, conductor

The WDR Symphony Orchestra presents a live broadcast from the Kölner Philharmonie featuring Isabelle Faust, currently the ensemble’s Artist in Residence. The German violinist returns to one of the central works of the 19th-century repertoire, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, a score she approaches with her characteristic clarity and expressive poise.

The programme opens with Schumann’s dramatic Die Braut von Messina Overture and, after Mendelssohn’s Concerto, continues with Schumann’s Fantasie in C major for violin and orchestra — a technically demanding, rarely heard work that highlights Faust’s combination of precision and lyrical intensity.

To close the evening, Andrew Manze leads the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Schubert’s Symphony No. 7 “Unfinished”, whose two movements remain among the most enigmatic and captivating pages of the Romantic symphonic repertoire.

A live concert bringing together three major German composers, performed by one of today’s leading violinists and streamed from one of Europe’s most important concert halls.