NSO: Fennessy, Pärt, Mozart

The clamour and drama of life in one of the world’s most densely populated cities gives way to two sides of the same spiritual coin in a celebration of faith and anticipation of death. 

Arvo Pärt’s Berlin Mass is a luminous expression of joy written in response to the re-claiming of religious freedoms following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mozart’s Requiem is the most personal and rousing of declarations of a composer contemplating his own end. 

Inspired by a visit to Hong Kong, David Fennessy’s Bodies is a striking work featuring two ‘choirs’ of double basses, off-stage brass and percussion and a reference to Bach’s B minor Mass that conjures the claustrophobic experience of ‘a city so dense and crammed with people… all murmuring, shouting, screaming’.  

Arvo Pärt was a prolific composer of film soundtracks before developing the style that came to be called ‘holy minimalism’. 

Mozart’s Requiem was commissioned by an ‘unknown, grey stranger’ who insisted on anonymity. 

Believing he had been cursed, Mozart was convinced his last work, left uncompleted at his death. was a Requiem for himself. 

Robert Levin's completion is based on the first attempt by Mozart’s pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and changed, he says, "as little as possible, so as not to disturb the weight of the centuries". 

Pärt’s signature tintinnabuli (ringing) style in his Mass, heard in various incarnations from serenely reverent duets to glowing declarations of faith from full chorus. 

The ominous voices of slicing strings, baleful brass and lowering voices that set the tone for Mozart’s dark-hued Requiem. 

The molten quality of the ‘Dies Irae’, forlorn trombone in the ‘Tuba mirum’, the clash between the consoling gentleness of the ‘Recordare’ and fear and fury of ‘Confutatis’, the aching vulnerability of the ‘Lachrymosa’, and glowing affirmation of faith in the concluding ‘Lux aeterna’.