Reformation celebration

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Yannick Nézetséguin have recorded Mendelssohn’s five symphonies.

Why now? Well, 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, an event that the Romantic composer celebrated in his Reformation Symphony of 1829. The piece was written for the 300th anniversary in 1830 of the Augsburg Confession – one of the central documents of Lutheranism. Nézet-séguin conducts the original version of the Fifth Symphony, reinstating passages Mendelssohn later cut, for this Deutsche Grammophon recording. It’s the first complete symphony cycle to be recorded in the Philharmonie de Paris, which opened in 2015, and follows the same team’s complete Schumann symphony cycle – our May 2014 Recording of the Month.