European Tour
Klaus Mäkelä Alexander von Zemlinsky
Jean Sibelius

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) was terminally ill from tuberculosis when he wrote the opera Oberon, which was to be his last work. Oberon was Weber's only opera with an English text and was first performed in the spring of 1826 in London, where Weber died just a few weeks later. Oberon is an elven king from medieval literature, and the Overture is one of Weber's most original orchestral pieces – his inventiveness as an orchestral composer inspired later composers such as Hector Berlioz, Gustav Mahler, and Claude Debussy.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) put an end to his career with a unique contribution to orchestral music with his tone poem Tapiola in 1926. Just like his seventh and last symphony, which was completed a few years previous, Sibelius strived for unity in the music he created. Everything in it originates from one basic idea. As is often with Sibelius, inspiration was taken from the deep forests of the Nordic countries. Tapio is the god of the forest in Finnish mythology.

Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871–1942) was one of the prominent musical personalities in his home city of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, among other things, as Arnold Schönberg's teacher and brother-in-law. In 1901 he had a relationship with Alma Schindler, who later became Gustav Mahler's wife. He worked on the sorrow of love through his work on the orchestral fantasy Die Seejungfrau, based on H.C. Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid. Zemlinsky withdrew Die Seejungfrau after its premiere in 1905, and it was long thought to have been lost. But the score was rediscovered in the 1980s and has become one of the composer's most-played works.