Stabat mater

Description

A fervent Catholic, Dvorak, who was an organist by profession before becoming a celebrated composer, wrote little sacred music (including a Requiem and a Te Deum), but he gave birth to profound and ambitious works. Such is this Stabat Mater, which was written in 1877 following a family tragedy: the successive loss of his three children. A work that is as much a grand fresco as a personal diary. In it, Dvorak introduces a great diversity of feelings (tributes to his Catholic faith, to his country, to his family), solo interventions modeled on Brahms’s Requiem, and a variety of forms: chorales, fugue, pastoral, following the oratorio pattern. Each movement is linked by melodic motifs and the same harmonic foundation, and the work unfolds in an arch shape, following a highly planned evolution in a long crescendo. Helmut Rilling is not an imperious or brutal conductor. He imposes a supple beat that is never metronomic. His conducting is fluid and thoughtful. Helped by excellent singers who blend perfectly into the orchestral flow and by a choir he controls with exemplary assurance, he enhances the humble and generous character of the work while respecting the cohesion of the ten movements to make it above all a universal message of faith. (Jérôme Angouillant)