Mozart — Requiem

The English conductor Jonathan Nott, recognized as an outstanding interpreter of contemporary music, during a concert with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and the NFM Choir will offer a fascinating and non-standard combination of compositions by Mozart, Schönberg and Kurtág. The program includes works created over nearly two centuries: from classicism to the present.

The first work to be conducted by Nott will be dedicated to the a cappella choir Friede auf Erden op. 13 by Arnold Schönberg, creator of the Second Vienna School. In this early composition, completed in 1907, the author drew on the text of a poem by the Swiss poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Figuratively, he contrasted minor tonalities with major, polyphonic sections with homophonic, and dissonances with consonants. In a letter to conductor Hermann Scherchen, written in 1923, Schönberg characterized the work as follows: “It is an illusion for a mixed choir, an illusion, because when I wrote this piece, I still believed that harmony between people was possible”. Grabstein für Stephan op. 15c, in turn, was dedicated by György Kurtág to the memory of the singer Stephan Stein. The work took its final form in 1989. It is designed for guitar and ensemble of spatially arranged instruments. Unexpected changes in dynamics and a fantastic, anxiety-filled sonic aura effectively catch the listener's attention. The Hungarian composer is one of the nesters of contemporary music. In February of that year he celebrated his 100th birthday.

The second part of the concert will be filled with Requiem, the last unfinished work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It's a paradoxical piece. On the one hand, the author goes back in it to a more or less distant past. Quotations from the work of Georg Friedrich Handel appear here, and the form refers to the memorial mass of Michael Haydn. On the other hand, it is a surprisingly dark composition, full of violent emotions, already anticipating the musical world of romanticism. Many myths have grown around the Requiem over time. It was believed that Mozart's death was contributed by his supposedly jealous rival, Antonio Salieri, who was supposed to poison him. It was also said that the Austrian artist wrote this mourning mass for himself, foreshadowing imminent death. Meanwhile, the work was commissioned by an aristocrat who had a habit of organizing concerts, during which he presented the compositions commissioned and performed there as his own. The extraordinary aura surrounding the Requiem even led to the brazen theft. When an autograph of the work was shown at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels, a man who has not been identified to this day gained access to the manuscript and tore out a fragment containing the last transcript crossed out by Mozart's hand.