International Festival of Music and Sacred Art 2022 - 21st edition • Rome

To Rome come back on International Festival of Music and Sacred Art: the twenty-first edition takes place from 12 to 15 November 2022 in the incomparable setting of the four Papal basilicas, St. Peter in the Vatican, St. Paul Outside the Walls, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore.

Organized as always by Pro Musica and Sacred Art Foundation, the Festival offers four intense days of music, with five dates animated by artistic groups of international prestige; for the first time i will be guests Bamberger Symphoniker directed by Jakub Hrůša.

The spirit of the Festival is summarized in the words that Paul VI he addressed to artists in the closing speech of the Second Vatican Council in 1965: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, is what infuses human hearts with joy, it is that precious fruit that resists the wear and tear of time, that unites generations and makes them communicate in admiration ", a message that guided the Foundation and the its president Hans-Albert Courtial in the realization of the event since the beginning.

The International Festival of Music and Sacred Art It kicks off Saturday November 12 with a double date: in the morning (11 am) in the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican the cardinal Angelo Comastri will celebrate a Mass which will also be a tribute - in the 150th anniversary of his birth - to Don Lorenzo Perosi, a leading exponent of the Cecilian Movement and perpetual director of the Pontifical Sistine Music Chapel. The Choir of the Vicariate of the Vatican City directed by Themistocles Capone, will perform his Missa Secunda Pontificalis composed in 1906, in addition to Magnificat and to the motetto Tu es Petrus.

Also on November 12, at 9 pm in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, is scheduled for inaugural concert which sees protagonists i Bamberger Symphoniker - among the most renowned German orchestras, but very little known in Italy - flanked by Choir of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia. The Bavarian team makes its debut at the Festival, and plays for the first time in Rome in a complete line-up, led by its principal conductor Jakub Hrůša, well known in the capital for being also the principal guest conductor of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. On the program the monumental 'German Requiem', Ein Deutsches Requiem of Johannes Brahms, first performed in 1868 in the Bremen Cathedral. Solo voices, the soprano Christina Landshamer and the baritone Konstantin Krimmel, BBC New Generation Artist for the three-year period 2021-23.

It continues on Sunday November 13, still in the Basilica of San Paolo out of the walls (9 pm) with the second concert by Bamberger Symphoniker, again directed by Jacob Hrůša: on the laws the Symphony n. 9 by Anton Bruckner - proposed in recent days also by Antonio Pappano with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra - “dedicated to God” and remained unfinished on the composer's death in 1896.

Monday November 14, the Festival, which has always been open to contemporary music and new repertoires of sacred music, in the solemn setting of Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano (9 pm) will present in first performance in Rome the Universal Vespers on text by Pope Francis taken from the prayer of March 27, 2020, work in which the composer Andrea Mannucci musically relives the moving and extraordinary moment of prayer in a time of pandemic, presided over by Pope Francis in a deserted St Peter's Square, an indelible and historical image that has traveled the world. “His words seemed to me like boulders, - recalls the composer - like swords that pierce the intimate of every man. It came naturally to me to appropriate it to leave a musical testimony ”. The orchestra will perform the sacred cantata The Passionate, a young chamber ensemble born in 2019, under the direction of Claude Villaret and with the solo voices of the sopranos Carlotta Bellotto is Nadina Calistru.

The International Festival of Music and Sacred Art 2022 will close Tuesday November 15 (9 pm) in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore with the sumptuous baroque sacred music, between Italy, Germany and England. Ildebrando Mura, choirmaster of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, will direct theOrchestra and Choir of the Ludovicea Chapel - already appreciated in the past editions of the review - flanked by the Chorus and the solo voices of the Liberian Chapel. The program opens with the Magnificat BWV 243 of Johann Sebastian Bach, continues with Dixit Dominus RV 594 of Antonio Vivaldi, to close with the famous coronation hymn Zadok the Priest of George Frideric Handel.

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(Below, Jacob Hrůša, photocredit © Marian Lenhard)