The opening concert of this year’s festival opens up a space for reflection, in which the steadfastness of faith is tested not in the glare of the spotlight, but in silence and solitude. It presents a musical journey that does not reject darkness, but sees it as a necessary starting point for fulfillment. The central motif is the paradox in which joy does not spring from the absence of suffering, but from the ability to sing one’s way out of even the deepest despondency toward the verticality of light.
This inner narrative connects the three works into a coherent whole. Henri Tomasi’s Fanfares liturgiques (1947) captures the dramatic process of inner transformation and the hero’s renunciation of the past. Through the monumental image of the Good Friday procession in Seville, where the redemptive voice of heaven resounds above the dark ostinato of Dies irae, the music becomes an authentic cry of the soul seeking reconciliation.
Sir James MacMillan follows up on this ritualistic colorfulness in Larghetto for orchestra (2009) with a path of inner quietude. The composition is an instrumental transformation of his popular choral work Miserere and reflects the gradual extinguishing of candles and resignation to the outside light. In a meditative stream of percussion and harp, MacMillan follows the arc from awareness of guilt to the unwavering rise of hope.
The cycle of transformation culminates in Francis Poulenc’s Stabat Mater (1950). Born out of a deep personal crisis and a return to faith, the work gives pain a human face. In twelve movements oscillating between chilling drama and childlike humility, the soprano solo becomes a mediator between human anguish and heavenly peace, in which suffering is definitively transformed into spiritual joy.
The common trajectory of these compositions uses ritual as a fixed point in the chaos of the world. Here, music becomes a spiritual compass guiding us through a landscape where human finitude encounters the eternal order. It is a dialogue across the centuries, in which echoes of chorales and psalms meet modern orchestral colorfulness, as if symbolizing that it is precisely in its midst that the quiet optimism of hope begins to stir.
The concert will take place on Sunday, March 29, at 8 p.m. in the Church of St. John in Minoritská Street.
HENRI TOMASI Fanfares liturgiques for soprano, choir, and brass
JAMES MACMILLAN Larghetto for orchestra
FRANCIS POULENC Stabat Mater for soprano, choir, and orchestra
Simona Šaturová soprano
Prague Philharmonic Choir
choirmaster Lukáš Kozubík
Brno Philharmonic
conductor Jaroslav Kyzlink
Tickets can be purchased individually or as part of the Festival na míru (Tailor-made Festival), where you get a bigger discount the more concerts you attend.
