In the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth, the Monteverdi Choir, in its 60th year, explores the 19th-century vision of the past.

Anton Bruckner was born 200 years ago this year. To hear his choral music with fresh ears, we have placed his celebrated a cappella motets together with unlikely bedfellows, above all the sacred motets of Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613).

Richard Wagner was one of Bruckner’s musical heroes, and in his motets Bruckner manages to distil a hyper-romantic and highly expressive idiom into a compact form which otherwise eluded both of them.

250 years earlier, Gesualdo was experimenting with ear- and mind-bending chromatic expressionism and enharmonic shifts in a remarkably similar way. Both Bruckner and Gesualdo were outsiders, were strongly led by their Catholic faith, and showed signs of mental instability. The tormented passion of their music seems to reach out across the centuries.

Programme
Palestrina arr. Wagner Stabat mater
Bruckner Postlude/Nachspiel in D minor WAB 126
Gesualdo Illumina faciem tuam
Bruckner Christus factus WAB 11
Gesualdo Ave dulcissima Maria
Bruckner Ave Maria WAB 6

- Interval -

Bruckner Prelude & Fugue in C minor WAB 131
Lotti Crucifixus a 8
Gesualdo Tribulationem et dolorem
Bruckner Os justi WAB 30
Gesualdo O vos omnes
Bruckner Salvum fac populum tuum WAB 40
Gesualdo Peccantem me quotidie
Bruckner Vexilla regis WAB 51
Gesualdo Laboravi in gemitu meo
Bruckner Locus iste WAB 23