Requiem de Mozart
With Les Siècles
Synopsis
At the very height of his creative powers, Mozart began composing his ultimate masterpiece – only for death to snatch him away, leaving the score unfinished. Yet, far from being merely a passionate expression of grief or sorrow, his Requiem emerges as a vibrant celebration of a life traversed by the full spectrum of human emotions.
More than two centuries later, in 1983, Claude Vivier composed the chamber piece Glaubst du a die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? (“Do You Believe in the Immortality of the Soul?”). In the text, he shockingly predicted his own death, confronting the inevitable with a strange, haunting serenity.
Found murdered before its completion, his final score was cut short. Through this programme, Aedes investigates the profound dualities of tension and release, breath and silence, vital life-force and suspended time. Additional works steeped in the mystery of mortality enrich this exploration, inviting the listener to perceive the subtlest currents of existence.
Arvo Pärt establishes a stillness charged with palpable tension, while Sven-David Sandström extends a funeral motet left unfinished by Henry Purcell, providing it with a luminous, shimmering new conclusion. Meanwhile, Gérard Grisey scrutinises the rhythm of time, guiding the ear to the very threshold of silence.
This musical journey offers a deeply sensory experience in which time hangs suspended yet moves in perpetual motion – a breath held in an eternal instant.
Programme
Claude Vivier
Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele?
Arvo Pärt
Fratres
Version for string orchestra and percussion
Henry Purcell / Sven-David Sandström
Hear my prayer, o Lord
Gérard Grisey
Stèle
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Requiem en ré mineur K. 626