Compact Classics, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra’s series of one-hour-long concerts of stirring orchestral music in the Grand Hall of the Elbphilharmonie, now enters its second season. Shakespeare’s famous couple in love, Romeo and Juliet, is the focus of this first concert of the series. No other work of literature has ever evoked the extreme power of love as strikingly as Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name. To be in love; passionate love; but also betrayal, conflict, hate and death – all of these facets of love are brilliantly translated to music in a work of instrumental ballet music by Sergei Prokofiev. read less