ÉGBEN MARADT REPÜLŐ

This programme is like a lavishly laid festive table set in the heart of Krakow: behind the dishes lie deep emotions, rich tradition and special musical seasonings. It kicks off with Stanisław Moniuszko’s fabulous fantasy overture, which combines a pinch of romance and a helping of fairy dust with lots of dramatic magic.

One thing we know for certain about the 21st century is that it will be when the survivors of the Holocaust take their last breath. Every single one of them. Slowly but surely, they are leaving us to our own devices. “Do we want to forget what happened, as if it were a bad dream, or do we want to accept the events as human civilization’s greatest trauma?” the author Péter Esterházy once asked.

Two masterpieces of late 19th-century French sacred music make up the programme of this concert-hall celebration: Gabriel Fauré’s exquisitely beautiful Requiem and the Clovis Mass by the elderly Charles Gounod. Between the movements of the latter work, the audience will also become acquainted with four further gems from the Gallican tradition of church music, with one composition each by Alexandre Guilmant, Louis Aubert, Camille Saint-Saëns and Théodore Dubois.