Gabriel Fauré Requiem - Benefit Concert for the Palliative Network Freiburg

Description

Cappella Nova Freiburg e. V. performs the work in the version for organ and choir under the direction of Katharina Skala. Featuring:
Natalie Beck, soprano, Uli Bützer, baritone, David Kiefer, organ.
"After all these years of accompanying funeral services on the organ,
I know everything by heart! I wanted to write something different."
This is how Gabriel Fauré, born May 12, 1845, in Pamiers in the Pyrenees, and died November 4, 1924, in Paris, commented on his Requiem. He composed the work on his own initiative, mostly prompted by the death of his father (1885) and his mother (1887). On January 16, 1888, it was premiered at the annual memorial service of the esteemed architect Joseph-Michel Le Soufaché in the Parisian church of St. Madeleine, where Fauré was then serving as organist and choir director.
... and Fauré wrote something different! He did not set the entire text of the then-common funeral mass to music. Initially, Fauré only set five movements: "Introït et Kyrie," "Sanctus," "Pie Jesu," "Agnus Dei," and "In paradisum," written for a small choir with organ accompaniment. He added "Offertoire" and "Libera me" only in 1889. By 1894, Fauré continued to expand the instrumentation of the Requiem, and at the publisher's insistence, he released the orchestral version in 1901.
With the bourgeois revolutions at the end of the 19th century in Europe, society's view of the omnipotence of the (Catholic) church also changed. The fear of the horrors of the heavenly judgment, which only the "exclusively salvific church" could provide protection from, gradually faded. The heaven, above all, lost the terrors of purgatory. Accordingly, Fauré refrains from the dramatic depiction of the Heavenly Judgment, mentioning it only in passing.
It was meant to be a gentle requiem, a lullaby of death. Fauré did not perceive death as a painful experience but as a welcome liberation, a longing for the afterlife.
"All the religious imagination I possess, I have given to my Requiem, which is governed from start to finish by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest." (Fauré)
His Requiem was also played at his own funeral in 1924.
The concert evening is complemented by motets by Karl Jenkins (*17. 2.1944). Additional information:
16:30:00

Highlights

• Benefit concert for the Palliative Network Freiburg
• Performance of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem
• Featuring Natalie Beck (soprano) and Uli Bützer (baritone)

General Information

Cappella Nova Freiburg e. V. performs Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in the version for organ and choir. The concert takes place at the Christuskirche in Freiburg im Breisgau and supports the Palliative Network Freiburg.

Location

Zasiusstraße 5, 79102 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

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