Mozart's Requiem
Hope, light and mystery: Klaus Mäkelä conducts Mozart and Sibelius
The Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä is leading the orchestra in Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony and in Mozart’s emotional Requiem: it’s fascinating music surrounded by speculation.
Mozart’s Requiem still serves as a source of comfort, reflection and pure listening pleasure to many.
Concert programme
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Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 4
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-- interval --
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Requiem, KV 626
Performers
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Klaus Mäkelä
conductor, artistic partner
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Sabine Devieilhe
soprano
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Sasha Cooke
mezzo soprano
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Julian Prégardien
tenor
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Benjamin Appl
bass
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Nederlands Kamerkoor
choir
About this concert
The story is well known: a mysterious anonymous patron commissioned Mozart to compose a requiem. Mozart, who was terminally ill, would die before finishing the work. His widow had the Requiem completed so that it could be performed in her late husband’s honour. The work thus became a requiem for Mozart himself, as well as a universally loved masterpiece which still serves as a source of comfort, reflection and pure listening pleasure to many.
Klaus Mäkelä opens the concert with his illustrious compatriot Jean Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, a work full of menace and darkness, and one which has given rise to much speculation. Did Sibelius forebode the First World War? Is the symphony his attempt to resolve traumatic childhood memories? Or does it reflect his depression resulting from throat cancer? Sibelius himself called the work a retreat from life. Yet the work is not all doom and gloom: Sibelius’s Fourth contains beautiful moments of hope, light and mystery.
Dates and tickets
About this concert
The story is well known: a mysterious anonymous patron commissioned Mozart to compose a requiem. Mozart, who was terminally ill, would die before finishing the work. His widow had the Requiem completed so that it could be performed in her late husband’s honour. The work thus became a requiem for Mozart himself, as well as a universally loved masterpiece which still serves as a source of comfort, reflection and pure listening pleasure to many.
Klaus Mäkelä opens the concert with his illustrious compatriot Jean Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, a work full of menace and darkness, and one which has given rise to much speculation. Did Sibelius forebode the First World War? Is the symphony his attempt to resolve traumatic childhood memories? Or does it reflect his depression resulting from throat cancer? Sibelius himself called the work a retreat from life. Yet the work is not all doom and gloom: Sibelius’s Fourth contains beautiful moments of hope, light and mystery.