Laurence Equilbey conducts Mendelssohn

At the Philharmonie de Paris, Laurence Equilbey leads her orchestra Insula and chamber choir Accentus, alongside a quartet of world-class soloists, in a program devoted to Felix Mendelssohn's often overlooked choral works. A veritable bridge between the Baroque heritage of Bach and the passionate outpourings of Romanticism and modernity, these pieces — some left unfinished or unpublished in Mendelssohn's lifetime — combine spiritual fervor with the pure joy of song, even in their most solemn pages. Equilbey's program juxtaposes the sacred and the profane, a cappella pieces and orchestral scores, following fragments of the mystically tinged oratorio Christus with the pagan frescoes of Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), an adaptation of Goethe that sends the choir into a state of near-bacchanalian exultation.