Myung-Whun Chung, a close friend of La Fenice, will perform Mozart’s Vesperae Solenne de Confessore K. 339 with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Theater on 3 December. One of the most significant sacred compositions that Mozart, twenty-four years old at the time, wrote in Salzburg. Probably referring to St. Joseph, the mysterious Confessor, it is presented in all its grandeur and compositional doctrine. The instrumentation employed is composite and articulated by a counterpoint which, far from impairing its effects, gives the music an imposing vitality, a sonic enchantment. In the second movement of the concert, the tonality rises by half a tone and passes from C major of the Vesperae Solenne de Confessore to C sharp of the Trauermarsch placed at the beginning of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Composed between 1901 and 1903, it was the first work written in the famous cabin in the woods on the Wörthersee, in Carinthia.
