Two major works by Mozart are on the programme of this concert, two commissions received in quasi opposite circumstances…
18 June 2017 - 4pm and 8pm - Royal Chapel Mozart: Requiem & Coronation Mass
Unfinished masterpiece, musical testament, timeless sacred music composition going far beyond the religious context, Mozart’s Requiem collects superlatives. Mozart might even have composed it sensing his own death coming. It was in fact a commission from Count Walsegg for his wife’s funeral. In Vienna Mozart was the foremost opera composer of his time and his name guaranteed a certain “aura”, even if the Count declared the works he commissioned to be his own before revealing the original author. When Mozart died on 5th December 1791, he had entirely finished the Requiem and the Kyrie and a large part of the five following numbers, from the Dies Irae to the Confutatis. His student Sussmayr was put in charge of completing the score. This work has since then given rise to thousands of hypotheses, but above all it compels both the audience and the interpreters, and imposes itself in the form left by Mozart, as if these last notes, the dying composer’s still raised pen, were all the more precious…
Mozart wrote the Coronation Mass in 1779 at the age of twenty-three, after a commission of the Archbishop of Salzburg, Count Colloredo, in honour of the commemoration of the Coronation of the miraculous Virgin of the Maria Plain sanctuary. The Mass was an immediate success when it was first performed at the Salzburg Cathedral, its was played again for the coronations of Leopold II, King of Bohemia in Prague in 1791 and in 1792 for Franz II of Bohemia, nephew of Marie-Antoinette who was to become Franz I, Emperor of Austria. A vast composition for soloists, choir and orchestra, this is Mozart’s most famous Mass of the twenty he composed. He deploys a virtuoso palette, even making the Agnus Dei the melody of the Countess’s aria Dove Sono in Le Nozze di Figaro. This magnificent work with alternating choir and soloists and its brass fanfares unfolds with the brilliance and the sumptuousness of a grand opera finale… For these two masterpieces Jean-Claude Spinosi is surrounded by fervent soloists and by the magnificent Choir of the Barcelona Catalan Music Palace, proud of its 125 years of existence!
PROGRAMME
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Requiem & Coronation Mass
casting
- Soraya Mafi Soprano
- José Maria Lo Monaco Mezzo-soprano
- Julien Behr Tenor
- Luigi de Donato Bass
- Chamber Choir of the Catalan Music Palace, Barcelona (Director Simon Halsey)
- Ensemble Matheus
- Jean-Christophe Spinosi Conductor
practical information
Sunday 18 June 2017 – 4pm and 8pm
