On 13 September Torsten Rasch’s new Mendelssohn Lieder arrangements will be premiered in the Mendelssohn Hall, Leipzig, by celebrated baritone Matthias Goerne and the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum. Rasch has been described as ‘a man who writes most beautifully for both voice and orchestra’, so it was fitting that the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester commissioners turned to him for this particular vocal project. The 25-minute song-cycle, entitled was bedeutet die Bewegung... and scored for voice and strings, uses seven of Mendelssohn’s Willemer Lieder with new transitions by Rasch linking each song.
‘Choosing the songs I tried to tell a story of 2 lovers who are about to part from each other. As their distance grows wider and wider, their feelings for each other grow stronger and range from desperate melancholy to rather fatalistic expressions. In the transition parts composed anew, I emphazise these expressions using motifs from the song just finished or the next one, creating a natural link between them.' (Torsten Rasch)