‘What is interesting about these pieces is not so much the liturgy as the ritual. The strength of these composers resides in their ability to lead us towards something that transcends even the boundaries of confessional boundaries. They seek to reconnect all human thought with an idea of the infinite. The programme is structured like a mosaic. It reveals how the composers look to the past to invent their own language. Mozart draws inspiration from Bach and Handel; Mendelssohn rediscovers the early masters; Bruckner carries on, in his own way, the legacy of sacred polyphony. All take part in a conversation that began long before them.” (Raphaël Pichon)
Mozart’s Mass in C minor is not merely one of the pinnacles of his sacred music. It is also a crossroads. Behind its dramatic power, behind the virtuosity of its arias and the splendour of its grand choruses, several centuries of musical traditions converge: the counterpoint inherited from Bach and Handel, Renaissance polyphony, Italian concertante style and the new sensibility of Viennese Classicism.
This programme explores the paths that led to the Mass in C minor and those it has opened up. It emerged quite naturally after several years spent exploring Mozart’s spiritual world: The Magic Flute, the Requiem, and then Zaïde, whose adaptation already brings into dialogue fragments of the unfinished opera with Davidde penitente, a vast sacred fresco in which Mozart used some of the music from the Mass in C minor. Returning today to the original score is, in many ways, a return to the source : how does the great polyphonic tradition with which Mozart engages in the Mass in C minor continue to resonate through the generations that followed?
This concert is conceived as a journey. The works follow one another according to their similar tones, colours and textures. Collective voices give way to individual voices; the choir responds to the soloists; the orchestra extends or suspends the musical discourse.
Programme
Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
Christus factus est, WAB 11
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
Miserere (parodie du Kyrie, MWV A3)
Hora est, MWV B18 (orchestration : Robert Percival)
Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Lacrimosa son io, D 131b
Anton Bruckner
Ave Maria, WAB 6
Felix Mendelssohn
Da nobis pacem (parodie de Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Grande Messe en ut mineur, KV 427
(Kyrie, Gloria in excelsis Deo, Laudamus te, Gratias agimus tibi, Domine Deus, Qui tollis peccata mundi, Quoniam tu solus sanctus, Jesu Christe, Cum Sancto Spiritu, Credo in unum Deum, Et incarnatus est)
Michael Haydn (1737–1806)
Ave Regina Caelorum, MH 140
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sanctus (Sanctus, Benedictus, Osanna)
Dates
