CANCELLED - Saturday 16 May 2020, 8pm
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
CANCELLED - Saturday 5 December 2020, 7pm*
Chapelle royale du Château de Versailles
Saturday 10 April 2021, 7pm*
Chapelle royale du Château de Versailles
Programme
Requiem
Gabriel Fauré
Messe de Clovis
Charles Gounod
With
Regula Mühlemann / Florie Valiquette* soprano
Jean-Sébastien Bou baryton
Hervé Niquet conductor
Chouchane Siranossian 1st violin and solo
Orchestra & Choir Concert Spirituel
Coproduction Bru Zane France / Concert Spirituel
Two visions of the sacred repertoire in France at the end of the 19th century
"My requiem was composed for nothing....for pleasure, if I may say so...", it is in these terms that Gabriel Fauré referred to his Requiem, probably one of his best known and most played scores today. The idea of pleasure may seem incongruous in the context of a mass for the dead, but the musician saw it as a deliverance, almost a moment of happiness, at least spiritual. And this is perhaps the secret of his success even today, in this warm and luxuriant sound material that leads to the elevation of the spirit. Throughout his career, Gounod composed nearly twenty sacred pages, mostly in the form of a mass or oratorio. The so-called Clovis Mass is almost contemporary with Fauré's Requiem, but in a completely different spirit. Here the musician returns to the neo-renaissance writing already present in older pieces. A "historicizing" style certainly but that Gounod practices with mastery.