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Tue 09 Sep 2008A marriage made in heaven
'A Midsummer Night's Dream', with Mendelssohn's music played by an orchestra in the forest, restores the original excitement of the Wedding March and brings Shakespeare's meditation on love into a contemporary setting
A QUESTION FOR YOU. What do the Wedding March, the year 1809 and the line "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows" have in common? Well, the composer Felix Mendelssohn was born in 1809. A precocious youth, he went to see a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dreamwhen he was 17. He was so impressed that he came straight home and wrote an "overture" to the play; a shimmery, elfin affair that has been described as one of the most accomplished pieces of music ever written.
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