Advertisement MissioICN Would you like to advertise on ICN? Click to learn more.

Krakow: Misteria Paschalia Festival features seven sacred masterpieces in seven days


Underground Chapel of St Kinga, Wieliczka

Underground Chapel of St Kinga, Wieliczka

This annual festival of sacred music during Holy Week in Krakow, Poland, stages rare and well-known masterpieces from the Renaissance and Baroque eras performed by some of Europe's finest early-music ensembles and musicians. Now in its 12th year, the 2015 edition of Misteria Paschalia offers a rare opportunity to compare and contrast Passion music by Pasquini, de Rore and JS Bach.

La sete di Cristo (The Thirsting Christ) is a little-known but often painfully beautiful oratorio from 1789 by the Roman composer Bernardo Pasquini. In style far removed from the austere grandeur of St John's Passion text as set by both de Rore and Bach, Pasquini creates an engaging human drama, very Italian in character, of people who face the burden of Jesus's crucifixion and its aftermath.

In the first part, two pairs of protagonists go to Golgotha, Mary with St. John and Joseph of Arimathea with Nicodemus, who recognize each other only at the foot of the cross. La sete di Cristo was rediscovered as recently as a decade ago, and is rapidly becoming a landmark piece for ensembles such as Academia Montis Regalis, conducted by Alessandro de Marchi, who will perform it on Good Friday, 3 April.

The previous Maundy Thursday evening is given over to the St John Passion of Bach, with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor and the countertenor-turned-conductor René Jacobs. Born in 1946, Jacobs has been singing and then conducting Bach for more than half a century, and his magnificent recording of the St Matthew Passion brought that experience to bear in a characteristic synthesis of embedded idiom and creative imagination: Gramophone magazine remarked on 'a Christus in Johannes Weisser who is intensely human, even febrile as he confronts the terrible events one by one...Jacobs's attention to texture and matters of accentuation is what defines his most compelling short-term characterisation': qualities that suit the brusque and bare rhetoric of the St John Passion even better.

Weisser again sings the part of Christus. Other musicians making return appearances are Jordi Savall and Christophe Rousset: Savall and his Hespèrion XXI ensemble with La Capella Reial de Catalunya will bring the 10 pilgrim songs of El llibre vermell de Montserrat ('The Red Book of Montserrat'), a collection of texts from the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat with which they have long been associated.

The concert on 1 April will take place in the Gothic splendour and excellent acoustic of St Catherine's Church. On Holy Saturday, Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques will perform the Leçons de ténèbres of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and François Couperin in a still more remarkable setting: the subterranean chapel dedicated to St Kinga in the salt mines of Wieliczka. More than 100 metres underground, the chapel is nonetheless richly decorated with crystal chandeliers and ornate bas-reliefs: it should provide a uniquely contemplative context for these elaborate songs of repentance. Misteria Paschalia takes place in Krakow from 30 March to 5 April.

For more information see www.misteriapaschalia.com. For reports during the festival see @PeterQuantrill on Twitter and www.quantrillmedia.com

Adverts

Mill Hill Missionaries

We offer publicity space for Catholic groups/organisations. See our advertising page if you would like more information.

We Need Your Support

ICN aims to provide speedy and accurate news coverage of all subjects of interest to Catholics and the wider Christian community. As our audience increases - so do our costs. We need your help to continue this work.

You can support our journalism by advertising with us or donating to ICN.

Mobile Menu Toggle Icon