Symphony No. 3, in A minor
(The Scottish) played by BBC Orchestra
(Section C)
Led by Marie Wilson
Conducted by Julian Clifford
On July 29, 1829, Mendelssohn visited Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and. saw the chapel in which Mary Queen of Scots was crowned, now open to the sky and surrounded with grass and ivy, and everything ruined and decayed '. ' And I think ', he wrote, ' that I found there the beginning of my Scotch Symphony.' The sixteen-bar passage that he actually .noted down then was the opening of the Introduction.
Strangely enough, the Symphony
-a typically Mendelssohnian compromise between classical form and romantic content-was not finished for twelve years. The score is dated January 20, 1842, and the first performance was given at Leipzig on March 3 of that year.