Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
|
Bavarian Radio Choir
(Chorus Master: Peter Dijkstra)
|
Mariss Jansons
conductor
|
Tatiana Monogarova
soprano
|
Marina Prudenskaja
alto
|
L’udovit Ludha
tenor
|
Peter Mikuláš
bass
|
Iveta Apkalna
organ
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
“Glagolitic Mass”
When Leoš Janácek composed his “Glagolitic Mass” in the summer of 1926—at the time he was already a 72-year-old man—he wanted to veer away from the Western tradition of setting the Mass to music. For that reason he chose to set all of the texts involved, from the Kyrie through the Agnus Dei, in Old Church Slavonic, a liturgical language that had been in regular use in Slavic lands up to the 10th century. Still another source of inspiration for his musical concept of the Mass came from such natural phenomena as lightning flashes, mystical fogs, and sacred, lonely forests, as well as the natural accents of human speech. “I wanted to express faith in the eternal life of a nation, not on a religious basis, but on a basis of moral, indestructible strength that takes God for witness,” explained Janácek. Mariss Jansons pairs this radical work of old age with Johannes Brahms' Second Symphony, one of the composer's most light-hearted works. “There’s nothing but blue sky, gurgling brooks, sunshine, and cool, green shadows!” raved Brahms’s friend Theodor Billroth about the D major Symphony.
A commitment of Zurich Insurance Company Ltd