Next Saturday at 6 p.m. at its headquarters in Alicante and on Sunday at 1 p.m. in the Church of the Assumption of Santa María (Cocentaina), Casa Mediterráneo offers in concert the Requiem, by Gabriel Fauré Op.48, performed by its Ensemble and the Coral Discantus of Murcia. Free admission until full capacity is reached.
Under the baton of the conductor Ignacio García-Vidal and the director of the choir, Ángel Carrillo, the soloists will be Victoria G. Pacanowska (soprano) and A. Emilio Sánchez (baritone).
A voluntary departure from the almost operatic drama of other compositions of the same name by Berlioz (1837) or Verdi (1874), Fauré’s Requiem opus 48 is a work full of serenity and intimacy, constructed with a great simplicity of orchestral resources in the search for a personal aesthetic which makes it one of the most beautiful Requiems ever written.
The Requiem was composed after the death of the composer’s parents, in a historical context of a resurgence of the Catholic faith in his country. Fauré had studied as a child (between 1854 and 1865) at the École Niedermeyer, a religious school where he learned sacred polyphony and organ playing. There he met his lifelong friend, Camille Saint-Saens, and from there he achieved success and held the important posts of organist at the church of the Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire.
