Harmoniemesse

Conductor Francesco Corti made an impression two seasons ago with his interpretation of Mozart / Concert Arias. He started a process with the musicians from our orchestra to further flex their stylistic muscles. The next stage on the route will be one of the six major masses from the late oeuvre of the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, the sparkling Harmoniemesse from 1802. It owes its nickname to its innovative, unusually large brass instrumentation or ‘harmonie’. Haydn wrote a composition for orchestra, chorus and soloists with an enormous stylistic range, from fugues that hark back to the Baroque to music that looks ahead to the Romanticism of his successors. It was the presumably last completed composition by the then very elderly musical legend. His Symphony nr. 84 ‘In nomine Domini’ from 1786, in which you can clearly hear that the composer wanted to work towards more prominent parts for the wind instruments, complements the Haydn evening.