Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, performed by the internationally renowned Belgian ensemble La Chapelle Sauvage under the direction of Karel De Wilde, featuring soprano Abigail Barker and countertenor Gleb Zakharov, both from London (UK), as soloists. Written during the final weeks of Pergolesi’s short life and premiered only after his death, Stabat Mater is widely regarded as one of the most moving and refined masterpieces of the Baroque era, a composition whose emotional power transcends time, faith and style. A hymn of sorrow and heavenly beauty, the work has inspired generations of composers, from Bach to Vivaldi, and has been performed by renowned artists such as Montserrat Caballé, Barbara Hendricks, Cecilia Bartoli, Renée Fleming, Philippe Jaroussky, Nathalie Stutzmann and Andreas Scholl: artists who have brought Pergolesi’s masterpiece to great heights worldwide. This unique concert offers audiences the rare opportunity to hear three sections of Pergolesi’s masterpiece as it would have sounded in his own time, performed in an authentic church setting. These lower, warm tones give the music a darker, velvety spectrum of colours, just as Pergolesi would have intended.
