“This is Italy! I have been looking forward to this supreme happiness my whole life, now it has begun and I enjoy it.”

During a cultural ‘Bildungsreise’, Mendelssohn falls completely under the spell of La Bella Italia. “I really enjoy the wonderful combination of cheerfulness and seriousness that can only be found in Italy.” Enthusiastically, he processes all the impressions that the country offers him: the rich art treasures, the beautiful landscape, the many traditions – they all earn a place in his Fourth Symphony.

Iconic stories with strong characters in the leading role – Tijl Uilenspiegel, Don Juan, Zarathustra: Richard Strauss was irresistibly drawn to it. With Don Quixote, his fame as a musical pantomime player reached new heights. ‘Fantastic variations on a theme of chivalric character’, he wrote under the symphonic poem, based on Cervantes's book about the roving knight Don Quixote de la Mancha and his servant Sancho Panza. And it is fantastic, this masterfully composed story that drags its listeners sometimes delicately, sometimes ironically and flamboyantly, into the fight against injustice.