Wolfgang Rihm - Et Lux
Mozart - Requiem [extracts]
Victoria - Requiem a4 [extracts]
Our Lent Tour begins, this year features as its centrepiece 'Et Lux' by the German modernist great Wolfgang Rihm.
Unperformed in the UK since its 2009 commission by The Hilliard Ensemble and The Arditti Quartet, don't miss your opportunity to hear this absorbing and poignant reflection of the requiem, as Rihm's music remembers phrases and melodies of other composers' works and draws new meaning out of familiar text.
We are so excited to be visiting new cities this year in Beverley and Bath - if you are in the West Country or Yorkshire, we would love to see you, perhaps for the first time! Our concluding London date finds us in the gorgeous Georgian church of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and we begin our tour, as is our tradition, with a Palm Sunday afternoon rendition in the Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds.
We have a fantastic line up of artists, comprising Facade regulars and new talents, to share with you over the coming weeks and tickets will be available on Eventbrite very soon! Stay tuned.
Rihm says:
"Et Lux is a requiem, but it is not a requiem by someone who knows what a requiem is about. I imagine being in an anamnesis or in an analysis and I remember words of a process which seems to date back quite a while.
It also has a biographic connotation. When I was young, I often sang in choirs and, of course, we sang the whole repertoire for choir of both the classical and the romantic epoch. We sang the big requiems of Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, Brahms, and also motets that originated from requiem texts. And since then, I've always remembered those texts from the requiem. I wasn't setting those requiem texts to music as a whole, but rather projecting a few sentences and phrases - whenever they came to my mind - into the music I was composing. The "stream of sound", the discourse of words, the mix between both vocal and instrumental articulation were the main essence of composing. Into that music, the words were flowing from my memory. I often tend to proceed that way: I memorise texts and later - when composing - I remember the texts ad use them in my composition.
I don't always remember these texts, but often I do."
