LXV Cuenca Religious Music Week

Antonio Moral
Artístic Director

As regards this the forty-fifth edition of the Cuenca Religious Music Week I would like to begin by making the observation that it has been organised along similar lines to those of the last few years. Once again the Music Week is reaffirming its commitment to the renewal of the traditional repertoire by offering a wide variety of world premieres, revivals and performances of neglected pieces alongside the greatest works of the sacred repertoire which obviously have an essential part to play in a festival of a religious nature such as Cuenca. The old and the new go hand in hand once again to form the essential axis of a what we hope is a challenging, rich and varied programme which takes place over a series of twenty-two concerts in the traditional festival venues the Theatre-Auditorium, the Cathedral, the churches of San Miguel and Arcas, the convent of the Religious Justinians of Saint Peter, the Monastery of the Franciscan Conception and the former Convent of the Barefoot Carmelites which is now the Antonio Pérez Foundation. It is also necessary to point out that six of the twenty-two concerts will be open to the general public, among them the four celebratory concerts of the Triduo Sacro and the Misa de Pascua (Easter Mass) which will take place in the Cathedral and that will be sung, as always, by Schola Antigua under Juan Carlos Asensio.


Historical revivals.
Since its beginnings and even more so over the last few years  the Cuenca Religious Music Week has presented a series of historical revivals as well as offering modern premieres of unknown work by mostly Spanish composers. On this occasion it is the turn of the sacred oratory La Gloria de los Santos by the Catalan composer Pere Rabassa (1683-1767) which was first performed in the Church of San Felipe Negri in Valencia in the year 1715. The modern-era premiere will be performed by the Josep Cabré Musical Company thanks to the research and transcription work undertaken by the musicologist María Teresa Ferrer Ballester and it will be heard in the Church of San Miguel in the evensong concert on Palm Sunday. Among this section of recovered works it is also necessary to mention the interesting programme which has been put together by Àngel Recasens and his group La Grand Chapelle which brings together of some of the best 17 th century Spanish polyphonic composers Juan Bautista Comes, Lopez de Velasco, Cristóbal Galan and especially the great Cuenca master Carlos Patiño. Three of his responsories will be performed as well as his sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus . Italian polyphonic works from the 16 th and 17 th centuries will be well represented by the Concerto Italiano led by Rinaldo Alessandrini and will include essential works from the repertoire of such fundamentally important musicians as Fabricio Dentice, Carlo Gesualdo, Francesco Durante and Domenico Scarlatti.


New music and premieres.
In the contemporary section of the festival there will be three world premieres. Two of them  those of Eduardo Rincon and Lera Auerbach are the traditional festival commissions given to a Spanish and a foreign composer respectively. The third, Lamento de Jueves Santo en Cuenca has been expressly written by the Mallorcan composer Antoni Parera Fons (1945) so that it may be included within the present edition of the festival. It will be played by the Armenian descended Lebanese violinist, Ara Malikian, as part of the “Abstracciones misticas” (Mystical Abstractions) cycle which brings together other instrumentals by J S Bach  in this case the complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin  with other contemporary works written for the same instrument: Página (Page) (1994) by Carmelo Bernaola, Sonata (1980) by the Armenian composer Adom Khoudoyan and the aforementioned premiere by Parera Fons. The Sinfonía bíblica by the prolific veteran Cantabrian composer Eduardo Rincón (1924) has been written for mezzo-soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra and includes biblical texts from the Song of Solomon, Apocalypse and Psalm 13.

The work will be performed at the inaugural concert on Good Friday by the Spanish National Choir and Orchestra under the direction of Josep Pons and it will share the programme with the Psalm Symphony (1930) by Igor Stravinsky, one of the greatest achievements of the sacred music repertoire of the twentieth century and a work which has not been heard in Cuenca since 1982. Primera Luz (Primordial Light) is the title that Lera Auerbach (1973) wanted for his Cuenca premiere which will be taking place at the matins concert on Easter Saturday and it has the added attraction of being performed by the Tokyo Quartet, one of the best chamber groups in the world, who will be appearing at the festival for the first time. The work is divided into six movements, moving between the limits of the sacred and the profane and is accompanied here by J.F. Haydn’s Die Sieben letzen Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze (The Last Seven Words of Christ on the Cross). This will be the first time that a piece of music by this young and highly solicited Russian composer, born in Chelyabinsk and now living in the United States, will have been heard in this country.

Another highlight in this section of new music will be that which the great Polish composer Krysztof Penderecki (1933) will be offering with three of his own pieces, two of which were composed and premiered last year and which are now being presented for the first time in our country. The most ambitious and important of these is his latest great Symphony “Lieder der Vergänglichkeit” (Ephemeral Songs), written for soloists, choir and orchestra which is the eighth in his vast repertoire and which was premiered in Luxemburg on July 26th last year at the opening of the city’s new auditorium. By way of contrast, Ciaccona in memoria de Giovanni Pablo II is a more intimate work written for string orchestra which was finished last October.

The piece was performed in public for the first time on a South American tour a month later in homage to his close friend Pope Karol Wojtyla who died in April 2005. Penderecki’s Stabat Mater for mixed a capella choir will also be heard again this year, a work that was premiered here in Cuenca by the Koan Group and José Ramon Encinar in April 1979. Penderecki’s music has not been appeared too often in Cuenca, with only two other of his works having been performed previously– the Stabat Mater (1962) and the Agnes Dei (1981).


A Mozart Celebration.
It almost goes without saying that the Music Week is adding to the Mozart celebrations which are taking place in the majority of international music festivals throughout the year on the occasion of the 250 th anniversary of the death of the great Austrian composer. The Music Week has set aside the opening and closing days of the festival for Mozart's music. In this way there will be an opportunity to hear less well known works such as the oratory Davide penitente K 469  with the Spanish National Choir and Orchestra  together with the more popular and unfinished Gran Misa en do menor K 427 (Mass in C Minor) with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Orchestra of the 18 th Century, whose musical material was reused in almost its entirety for this oratory. The numinous and brilliant Mass in C Minor , known as the “Coronation Mass” will bring the forty-fifth edition of the festival to an end on the morning of Easter Sunday with the same Dutch musicians who on Easter Eve will perform the short but intense motet Ave verum corpus and the popular cantata for soprano and orchestra Exsultate, jubilate . Finally the wonderful vocal group The Sixteen under Harry Christophers, accompanied by their orchestra The Symphony of Harmony and Invention will perform the version that Mozart himself made of one of his favourite works: The Messiah by G.F. Handel.


Works large and small.
Gustave Mahler's 9 th Symphony , one of the most outstanding works of the great symphonic canon  a difficult and enigmatic work which is, to our good fortune, in the hands of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra under the great Mahler expert Eliahu Inbal  will be heard for the first time in Cuenca, alongside other shorter formats. The pick of these include musical gems by J.S. Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge ( The art of Fugue)  Fabio Bonizzoni and Musikalisches Opfer ( Musical Offering )  Passamezzo Antico  which complete the “Mystical Abstractions” cycle; and the delicate mosaic inspired by the works of San Juan de la Cruz which make up the four parts of Federico Mompou's Música Callada which will be faithfully interpreted by the pianist Josep Colom. The reputed vihuela player Hopkinson Smith will try to make us fly “higher than any bird…” in the Sala Millares of the former Carmelite Convent which is now the Antonio Pérez Foundation and an essential venue in the Music Week. The German baritone Dietrich Henschel, accompanied by the pianist Michael Schaeffer, will give a Leider recital in the Church of san Miguel , with works by L.V. Beethoven, D. Milhaud, A. Dvorák and F. Martin, as the culmination of the recital section of this edition of the festival.