April 2022
Repertoire
W.A. MOZART: Symphony No. 36, KV 425 ‘Linz’
W.A. MOZART: Great Mass in C minor, KV 427
Performers
Ulrike Haller, soprano
Elionor Martínez, soprano
Joan Francesc Folqué, tenor
Josep-Ramon Olivé, baritone
Cor Lieder Càmera
Franz Schubert Filharmonia
Salvador Mas, conductor
Programme notes
Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor is, after Requiem, his most spectacular religious work. Gone was that handful of “short” Masses that Archbishop Colloredo had made him compose when he worked in his service at the court of Salzburg. Colloredo forced him to create functional religious music: no frills, no repetitions, no large orchestral masses. Mozart, now installed in Vienna and freed from that yoke, wrote the Great Mass, venturing into expressiveness and looking for the different states of mind that he experienced as a man, between light and darkness.
It masters all the technical resources that it used, from the old fugue style to arias in a quasi-operatic format that fully exploited the choir, sometimes in eight voices. The result was a monumental, powerful and profound work that he premiered in Salzburg, far away from the archbishop’s palace. Back in Vienna, Mozart spent a few days in Linz, where he was asked to hold a concert. Since he had no work in his briefcase, he decided to compose a symphony that he completed in three days. The Linz Symphony breathes luminosity and freshness on all four sides: direct, cheerful, technically perfect and like that indescribable air that only the genius from Salzburg knew how to impress in his music.
Biography Cor Lieder Càmera
The warm and expressive sound, characteristic of Lieder Càmera, was what Josep Vila i Casañas wanted to achieve when he founed the choir in 1990. It has continued to be so with his successors: Xavier Pastrana i Bitria, Elisenda Carrasco i Ribot and Eduard Vila i Perarnau.
Throughout its history, Lieder Càmera has been conducted by numerous prestigious conductors, and the ensemble has collaborated with various national and international orchestras. It has been attached to the Castell de Peralada Festival, and performed with the Carles Santos company, touring several European festivals as well as the TNC in a show about the poet Joan Maragall.
This unusual trajectory has made Lieder Càmera a versatile choir, with extraordinary interpretative flexibility and a special ability to communicate with the public. It has always been important to the choir to preserve their heritage and they have dedicated five of their six CDs to Catalan music. The latest, released in May 2017 on the occasion of the choir’s 25th anniversary, was the world premiere of the Sanctus-Benedictus mass for double choir conducted by Josep Vila i Casañas during the Chamber Season 2014-15 of L’Auditori.
Since the 2012-13 season, Lieder Cámara has been attached to L’Auditori, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and the National of Catalonia. And since the 2018-19 season, under the artistic leadership of Josep Vila i Casañas, Lieder Càmera has been developing a particularly ambitious project to incorporate professional singers to the ensemble.