Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Great Mass was composed as an expression of gratitude for personal welfare. The Austrian composer made a vow that he would write a new mass if he were allowed to return to his native Salzburg with his recently married Constanze. The artist’s family was divided by a conflict when his father, Leopold Mozart, did not want to consent to the marriage. In the programme of the concert inaugurating the new artistic season of the National Forum of Music, Mozart’s brilliant work from 1783, which will be performed under the baton of Andrzej Kosendiak, will serve to commemorate a much more difficult undertaking than resolving a family conflict, which was the resurrection of cultural life in a city ruined during World War II.
On June 29, 1945, just fifty-four days after the surrender of the German crew of the Festung Breslau – a concert of an orchestra known as the Wrocław Philharmonic took place. In the building of the Municipal Theatre (today the building houses the Wrocław Opera), among other pieces, Frederic Chopin's Polonaise in A major, Stanisław Moniuszko’s Winter Tale and Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s Melody were performed. These works will sound again, and talented young people will perform together with the NFM ensembles.
Mozart’s work, first performed on October 26, 1783, in St Peter Church in Salzburg, will be heard in the second part of the evening. The work, whose monumentality in the Mozart’ssacred oeuvre is equaled only by his Requiem, is famous for combining the majesty of piety with affects taken straight from the opera theatre. If we also notice clear inspirations from Baroque music with a large share of polyphony and musical rhetoric, it becomes clear that the Mass in C minor earned its nickname “The Great” not only because of its size, but also because of its stylistic richness. “Not only is Bach himself behind this work, but also Handel and the entire 18th century, including great Italians such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Caldara, Porpora, Durante; It is impossible to single out one name, because Mozart is now summing up his century and transforming its musical language,” wrote Alfred Einstein. The very idea ofthe past shaping the present and inspiring the future will constantly return during the first concert of the new NFM season of the Wrocław Philharmonic and the NFM Choir.