The Easter Experience

The custom of marking the name-day of Princess Esterházy with a newly composed Mass began in the 1790s and for many years was carried out by Joseph Haydn. In 1807 Beethoven was commissioned and responded with his Mass in C major. Coolly received at court, it is a celebratory work of large-scale brilliance. The cantata Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt is set to Goethe’s poems and contrasts calm with exuberance. In 1803 Beethoven set two numbers from Vestas Feuer, written by Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.

Richard Danielpour’s dramatic oratorio The Passion of Yeshua – a work which has evolved over the last 25 years – is an intensely personal telling of the final hours of Christ on Earth. It incorporates texts from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Gospels inspiring extraordinarily beautiful music that stresses the need for human compassion and forgiveness. Danielpour returns to the scale and majesty of Bach in this oratorio, creating choruses that are intense and powerful, and giving both Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene a central place in a work of glowing spirituality. Conductor JoAnn Falletta considers The Passion of Yeshua to be ‘a classic for all time.’

Missa solemnis was Beethoven’s response to the appointment of his student Archduke Rudolph (youngest brother of Emperor Franz I of Austria) as Archbishop of Olmütz in 1819. He planned for the piece to be completed on the occasion of Rudolph’s enthronement, on 19 March 1820, but the work proved to be much more of a challenge for the composer than he had anticipated. Accordingly, the premiere did not take place for another four years, on 7 April 1824, at a charity concert given by the Philharmonic Society of St Petersburg. This extraordinary work does not appear in the concert repertoire as often as it used to some years ago. Michael Gielen, who passed away in March 2019, can be heard in this historic recording from 1985 with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The programme for this world premiere recording consists of six unpublished works by Domenico Antonio Nola – five motets, a dialogue, and the sequence Stabat Mater – the manuscripts of which are all located in the Archive of the Girolamini Oratory in Naples. Additionally, there is a work for instrumental ensemble by Pietro Marchitelli, a Sonata a tre composed in Naples in Nola’s time. This monographic programme was prepared by Antonio Florio for Cracow’s 2019 Misteria Paschalia Festival, of which he is the artistic director, to celebrate Easter week.