Mozart's Great Mass in C minor
Before his famous Requiem, Mozart wrote the great Mass in C minor. It is a magnificent piece with dramatic choral movements and divinely beautiful solo parts. Daniel Harding, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio Choir offer Mozart at his best.
Ahead of Mozart’s visit back home to Salzburg with fiancé Constanze in 1783, he’d promised to write a new mass which would become Mass in C minor. The mass wasn’t finished on time, so at the premiere, it was completed with a section from his previous masses. Constanze herself was the soprano soloist at the premiere. The great mass in C minor is now considered to be one of Mozart’s best works.
Benjamin Britten wrote song cycle Serenade for a tenor soloist, French horn and string orchestra in the 1940s, while the war raged. The songs depict the different sides of night: dark and frightening, but also calm and safe.
The concert begins with a brief symphony; Mozart’s Symphony No. 32 in G major, vivacious and full of life, like all good concert openers should be!
Participants
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.
Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.
32 professional choristers make up the Swedish Radio Choir: a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world. The Swedish Radio Choir performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, as well as on tours all over the country and the world. Also, they are heard regularly by millions of listeners on Swedish Radio P2, Berwaldhallen Play and globally through the EBU.
The award-winning Latvian conductor Kaspars Putniņš was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir in 2020. Since January 2019, its choirmaster is French orchestral and choral conductor Marc Korovitch, with responsibility for the choir’s vocal development.
The Swedish Radio Choir was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Kaspars Putniņš first album with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.
Daniel Harding is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom in 2022 he celebrated his 15-year anniversary. In the 2014/2015 season, he devised and curated the celebrated Interplay Festival, featuring concerts and related inspirational talks with renowned artists and academics. As Artistic Director, he continues this type of influential programming. Harding is also Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years, and Music Director of Youth Music Culture, The Greater Bay Area in China. The 2024/2025 season will be his first as Music Director at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Harding is a regular visitor to the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. A renowned opera conductor, he has led acclaimed productions at the Teatro alla Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, the Anima Mundi festival of Pisa, and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel Harding tours regularly with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing at prestigious venues all over Europe and the world, and has recorded several acclaimed and award-winning albums with the orchestra. His tenure as Music and Artistic Director will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. “It is increasingly rare that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only lasts for more than a decade, but keeps growing,” he says about working with the orchestra.
In 2002, Harding was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, and in 2017 nominated to the position Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2021, he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Daniel Harding grew up in Oxford, England, and played trumpet before taking up conducting in his late teens. He is also, since 2016, a qualified airline pilot.
Den brittiske tenoren Andrew Staples har framträtt med dirigenter som Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding och Yannick Nézet-Séguin och orkestrar som Berlinerfilharmonikerna, Bayerska radions symfoniorkester, London Symphony Orchestra och Wienerfilharmonikerna. Han har gjort flera hyllade framträdanden i Berwaldhallen, exempelvis i Bachs Matteuspassion med Alan Gilbert 2019, i Elgars Gerontius dröm med Daniel Harding hösten 2019, i Mozarts Don Giovanni sommaren 2020 och i Bachs Johannespassion våren 2021.
Som operasångare gjorde Staples 2019 en uppmärksammad debut vid Metropolitan i New York som Andres i Bergs Wozzeck. En månad senare rönte han nya framgångar när han på kort varsel hoppade in i Mahlers Das Lied von der Erde med Gustavo Dudamel och New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Staples gästar regelbundet Royal Opera House i London där han bland annat sjungit Tamino i Trollflöjten, Flammand i Capriccio, Narraboth i Salome och Artabanes i Artaxerxes.
Under säsongen 2023/24 har Staples gästat bland annat Orchestre de Paris, Gürzenich Orchester, San Francisco Symphony, Müncher Philharmoniker, Stavanger Symphony och Orquesta de Valencia. Tillsammans med Les Siècles och Francois-Xavier Roth har han under våren 2024 turnerat Europa, samt gjort inspelningar av Das Lied von der Erde och har dessutom framträtt i flera konsertanta versioner av bland annat Mozarts Idomeneo, Beethovens Fidelio och Strauss Ariadne.
Andrew Staples har spelat in flera stora dramatiska verk på skiva, däribland John Adams opera Doctor Atomic, Edward Elgars Gerontius dröm och Bohuslav Martinůs oratorium Gilgamesheposet. Staples är även verksam som regissör och har bland annat gjort uppsättningar av Così fan tutte och La bohème i London, Händels Dido and Aeneas på en dansklubb i Berlin med Kiez Oper, samt en produktion för Choir of London där Brittens körklassiker Hymn to St Cecilia interfolieras med verk av palestinska flyktingar.
Chris Parkes is a horn soloist with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He is also principal horn player of the John Wilson Orchestra and former principal of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Furthermore, he performs with the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Philharmonia Orchestra London and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Parkes has appeared as a soloist with, among others, the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra led by John Wilson, Gianandrea Noseda and Daniel Harding. He has participated in chamber music projects and recordings with, for example, Anne Sofie von Otter, pianists Gwilym Simcock and Pierre-Laurent Aimard as well as with ensembles including Superbrass, the Stockholm Syndrome Ensemble and Fine Arts Brass. Parkes studied at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, where he has also been teaching since 2011.
Concert length: 2 h incl. intermission
Rosa Feola, soprano has unfortunately cancelled her participation.
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