A Midsummer’s Night Dream

For the past several seasons, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has been quite good at pairing classical music with text. In this case, the combination of Mendelssohn’s music with Shakespeare’s text, is obvious. But that does not diminish the possibilities for true magic. Principal guest conductor Susanna Mälkki leads the Phil in four performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall this week. You probably know the Overture for this music. That familiar piece was written early in the composer’s career. The rest of the music, for a production of the play, was written in the last years of his life.  Of course, if you’ve been to any traditional church wedding, you probably know another piece of music from this work, too.