Mezzo-soprano Wanda Franek sings Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” accompagned by Sinfonia Varsovia

A Passion Concert will take place on Thursday, 17 March at 7:00 p.m. at the Co-Cathedral Church in Kamionek, Warsaw. The performers will be Małgorzata Grzegorzewicz-Rodek (soprano) and Wanda Franek (mezzo-soprano), accompanied by Sinfonia Varsovia and conducted by Wojciech Rodek. The programme of the concert consists of works conducive to meditation and prayer.

In the second part of the concert the musicians will perform G. B. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater which is one of the most frequently performed works of music during Lent. It will be performed in the second part of the evening’s concert. The work was written for soprano, alto and string orchestra. Stabat Mater portrays the passion and death of Christ as seen by the Virgin Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Introduced by the Catholic Church, the Medieval sequence of Stabat Mater dolorosa has been set to music many times. The most famous setting is the one composed in 1736 by Giovanni Batista Pergolesi, an Italian composer, violinist and organist of the Baroque period. Pergolesi wrote Stabat Mater, his last completed work, while living in a Franciscan convent  in Pozzuoli. Several months later the composer died following a recurrence of tuberculosis, at an age of merely 26 years.

http://www.sinfoniavarsovia.org/en/passion-concert-in-kamionek.html