Between prayer and music
Katarzyna Jackowska
The Szczecin Philharmonic
Between prayer and music – this is the experience offered in this special season by Przemysław Neumann and our Orchestra.
Not everything that moves us needs to be loud. Some works do not strive for effect, nor do they hurry towards a climax. Instead, they dwell in a space between prayer and music – and it is precisely there that they leave their deepest mark.
The first half of the concert features Stabat Mater by Karol Szymanowski, one of the composer’s most profoundly affecting works, yet also among his most restrained and luminous. Composed in 1926 after the death of his beloved niece, it sets the medieval text describing the suffering of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross. Yet this is not a liturgical setting; rather, it is an intimate and deeply personal meditation.
After the interval, we enter a different sound world while remaining within the same spiritual realm. The programme continues with the orchestral suite from Parsifal by Richard Wagner, arranged by Henk de Vlieger. Wagner’s final stage work – which he described not as an opera but as a “sacred stage festival play” – tells the story of Parsifal, the “pure fool” who, through compassion, becomes a redeemer. What unfolds is less theatre than a musical contemplation of redemption.
Information and tickets:
https://filharmonia.szczecin.pl/wydarzenia/2411-Miedzy_modlitwa_a_muzyka
