Estimated duration

2 h, incl. intermission

Organizer

Helsingin kaupunginorkesteri

We celebrate Easter with works by composers who distanced themselves from traditional Christian church music.

Nil Venditti, conductor
Sonja Herranen, soprano
Aarne Pelkonen, baritone
Kaamos Chamber Choir
Chamber Choir Kampin laulu

Gabriel Fauré: Pavane
Olivier Messiaen: L’Ascension
Gabriel Fauré: Requiem

The deeply spiritual composer Olivier Messiaen wanted to harness his music to achieve mystical goals. He studied old church melodies, the rhythms of Hindu music, and birdsong. These elements find their own reflections in his meditative work Resurrection.

“My goal was to stray from the established path after all those years accompanying funerals! I’d had them up to here. I wanted to do something different.” Gabriel Fauré, who spent his career as an organist, said in an interview in 1902 that he wanted to deviate from traditional paths when composing his Requiem. “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”