“Goethe,” wrote Ludwig Rellstab in his autobiography Aus meinem Leben, “was a great admirer of Bachʼs fugues [...]. So Felix Mendelssohn was also requested to play a fugue by the great master. Zelter chose from the book of Bachʼs fugues which was brought, and the boy played the same totally unprepared, with perfect security.” In 1821, Felix Mendelssohn visited Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for the first time: Together with his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, the then 12-year-old spent more than two weeks in Weimar – a period from which arose a friendship which lasted until the death of the 60 year older poet. “Here,” wrote Mendelssohn in a letter dated 10 November 1821, “I play much more than at home, rarely under four hours, sometimes 6, probably even 8 hours. Every afternoon Goethe opens the Streicher piano with the words, ʻI have not heard you today – now make a little noise for me,ʼ and then he would sit down at my side [...]. His hair is not yet white, his step firm, his way of speaking mild.” In his Philharmonic Salon, Götz Teutsch explores the time that Mendelssohn spent together with the thinker and humanist in Weimar – with literary texts by Carl Friedrich Zelter, Ludwig Rellstab, and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, read by Maria Schrader. The musical framework is provided by the Philharmonia Quartet, the Minetti Quartet and the pianist Cordelia Höfer.