Equilbey, Accentus & Insula Orchestra: Mozart & Weber

Over het evenement

Written in 1779, Mozart's “Coronation” Mass earned its name after being played for the coronation of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1791 – or, more likely, for his son François II shortly thereafter. Whatever the occasion, the sumptuous radiance of this work – one of Mozart’s most celebrated masses – would have been appreciated by 18th‐century audiences as an apt way to symbolically mark the accession of power.

It was the same François II who later commissioned Beethoven to write Le Roi Étienne, an overture and nine sung movements intended to accompany the inauguration of a new theater in Budapest offered by Austria to Hungary in 1812 as a gift for its loyalty. Weber's cantata Kampf und Sieg (“Battle and Victory”) celebrates the 1815 battle of Waterloo. In this final work on the program, one hears the counterpoint between the French “Ça ira” and the English “God Save the King” leading to the victory of the English.

This concert is part of the War and Peace Concert Series I: October 8‐12.