Saturday 29 June 2019, 8pm#
Chapelle royale du Château de Versailles
Wednesday 17 July 2019, 8pm1
Le Corum / Opéra Berlioz de Montpellier
Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier
Wednesday 6 November 2019, 8pm*
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles - BOZAR

Concert program
J. P. A. Martini
Messe des morts à grand orchestre dédiée aux mânes des compositeurs les plus célèbres
H. Berlioz
Messe solennelle
Soloists:
Diana Axentii* / Adriana Gonzalez
Sébastien Droy / Julien Behr#
Mikhail Timoshenko1 / Andreas Wolf
Le Concert Spirituel, choir and orchestra
Hervé Niquet, conductor
2h with intermission
Coproduction Bru Zane France, AIDA/Festival Berlioz, Le Concert Spirituel
2019 – 150th commemorations of Berlioz’s death
Following the recreation of the Messe des morts by C.-H. Plantade, Le Concert Spirituel and the Palazzetto Bru Zane join forces once again and offer a rarity by Jean-Paul-Egide Martini (known for his famous romance Plaisir d'amour): Messe des morts à grand orchestre dédiée aux mânes des compositeurs les plus célèbres, and performed for the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI in 1815.
With the complicity of the Festival Berlioz, another mass, no less rare, completes this programme: Berlioz's Messe solennelle (1824). When he was only 20 years old, Berlioz composed an already revolutionary work with a tormented history. Commissioned by the chapel master of the Saint-Roch church, who thus offered the young artist an opportunity to showcase his qualities as a lyric composer to the Parisian public, the work was performed for the first time in this church on July 10, 1825. It is given again in Saint-Eustache two years later. After Berlioz declared that he had destroyed the score, the Mass was considered lost until its rediscovery in 1992 by the organist and choirmaster Frans Moors in Antwerp.
Beyond a similar choral writing and a group of three identical soloists (soprano, tenor and bass), it is above all by the originality of the ideas and the fusion of Italian and French styles that the two works come together.