VFCO / FABIO LUISI
Haydn, Rossini
Sonya Yoncheva and Ludovic Tézier have developed the same culture of vocality, placing at the centre of their art the purity of diction. In the company of Alice Coote and Sunnyboy Dladla, they perform Rossini's Stabat Mater, conducted by Fabio Luisi.
Programme
JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)
Symphony No. 49 in F minor Hob. I:49 « La Passione »
Interval
GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868)
Stabat Mater
Distribution
- Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra
- Fabio Luisi conductor
- Sonya Yoncheva soprano
- Alice Coote mezzo soprano
- Sunnyboy Dladla tenor
- Ludovic Tézier baritone
- Choeur de Chambre de Namur choir
Composed at the height of the composer’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ period, Haydn’s ‘La Passione’ Symphony takes an unusual formal path, opening with a tormented Adagio full of questions, before moving on to a furious, tempestuous Allegro. Here we find the Introduction-Allegro structure so dear to the classical style, even if the introduction is a movement in its own right, and twice the size of the Allegro that follows it!
Beneath Rossini’s Stabat Mater lies a decade of doubt and questioning. Its unusually tragic opening, given the composer’s history with The Barber of Seville, is surprising. In 1829, his Guillaume Tell, which had required so much effort, was a semi-failure. Rossini sensed that the fashion was now for grand historical frescoes, which held little interest for him. Having lost his status as composer to the king with the Revolution of 1830, and having separated from his partner, the singer who had been behind all his successes, Rossini gave up opera and composed this anguished, almost funereal Stabat Mater. At once sensual and sacred, the work explores the Virgin’s pain in a way that is lyrical and dramatic. The ‘Cujus animam’, sung by the tenor, recalls the most dazzling moments of Rossini’s operas of previous years.
