The Mozart 'Requiem' in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw tonight to commemorate the death on 17th October 1849 of that great musical genius Fryderyk Chopin.

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The Mozart Requiem was performed in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw tonight to commemorate the death of that great musical genius Fryderyk Chopin.

How desperately we need the consolation of hope that lies within his music in these terrible times that suffocate the creative spirit …

Watercolour and pencil drawing of Chopin on his death bed by Teofil Kwiatkowski. The painter was a witness to his last hours and death and drew a number of likenesses

The plinth in which the heart of Fryderyk Chopin has been laid 
Holy Cross Church, Warsaw

The grave of Fryderyk Chopin in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise Paris 

Today was the 177th anniversary of Chopin's death in Paris at two in the morning on 17 October 1849. This immortal work was performed at his funeral at his request. He always felt himself close to Mozart and admired his music above all excepting that of Bach. This single death took me once again on a journey towards the universality of a dark mystery of light.

This work takes you into the realms of the deepest conception of mortality (especially now, in real time, with our constant media sight of the fast-growing normalization of breathtaking violence and daily horror). Death and destruction in the Ukraine conflict, the war in Iran, Yemen and the Middle East, millions of families displaced or murdered in Sudan, the scattered entrails of the authentic hell of Gaza and now polarized violence in America, the burning streets of France, Italy and Albania). 

Are we headed for another world revolution based in changing demographics, unequal wealth redistribution and fluid identities? 

Such was not the case when I was a young 'artist' in the 1970s, an optimist retaining faith in the possibly misplaced civilizing power of art. Is this a growing politicization of Musical Art? I think not. I hope not ...

The universality of death comes to us all but never seems to dissuade some national leaders from embracing war repetitively and murderously with vengeance. Past lessons not learned or ignored .... 

The realms of internal feeling in this great work are not as deeply touched by the customary massive grandeur of the orchestral/choir original score as it was by the intimate manner of the small musical forces utilized tonight. The original work is of immense, tragic grandeur. We are all familiar with the monumental masterpiece known as Mozart's Requiem, but perhaps not this more meditative, timeless, inner spiritual landscape revealed tonight. This evening the work was presented in an original, chamber version, prepared and performed by the renowned Apollon Musagète Quartet.

My imagination and human empathy were moved unresistant and beyond calculation into the fluid landscape of human emotion and suffering in the face of death, taken there by the consoling universality of Mozart and memory of Chopin, the sublime music, destiny and expression of human grief.  

And now on this black night during the velocity of change, an element of the betrayal of Judas and a questioning of the nature of truth has entered the Garden of Eden. An additional perfidy has once again entered the portrait of horror so graphically laid out before us.

There were some extraordinary moments this evening where expressive polyphony, cantabile phrasing and internal details not normally heard, came poignantly and affectingly into the musical foreground and touched my human heart in consolation. 

Profile of the Reviewer Michael Moran 

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Please consider this remarkable recording:

https://sklep.nifc.pl/en/produkt/77398-mozart-requiem-for-piano-solo