NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Matthias Brandt / Manfred Honeck

Conductor Manfred Honeck has been fascinated with Mozart’s final work for years. In his project »A Requiem – Mozart and Death in Words and Music«, the multi-award-winner and long-standing friend of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra conducts the unfinished work up to the point at which Mozart left it when he died. Honeck leaves out the completion that is normally performed, and instead supplements the music with text fragments from evocative Biblical passages, letters by the composer and poems – as well as with other musical works.

In Honeck’s home region of Vorarlberg in Austria, the performances on Good Friday have long achieved cult status. In Hamburg, the conductor is joined by a top-class cast of soloists, the Latvian Radio Choir and the NDR Vokalensemble, as well as the well-known actor Matthias Brandt as narrator. The programme for the evening also features two other works composed in 1791, the year of Mozart’s death: the Overture to Mozart’s opera »La clemenza di Tito« and one of Joseph Haydn’s »London Symphonies«, Symphony No. 93 in D Major.