Death and Awakening

November 19, 2023 at 5:00 p.m.
Braunschweig Cathedral, Braunschweig

This concert by the cathedral choir and the Staatsorchester Braunschweig illuminates contrasting perspectives: questions on life and death, creation and transience as well as the destruction of nature by humans.

Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in C minor, which he composed as head of the “Chapelle de Roi” in 1816 in memory of King Louis XVI, who was executed in 1793, was also performed at Ludwig van Beethoven's funeral. The work can be seen as an internalization of the existential experience of death and the transience of life. But in darkness and death a believer is supported by the hope of eternal light, eternal life.

The monodrama “Awakening” by the Berlin composer Alexander Liebermann, a faculty member of New York’s Juilliard School, is about nature and its destruction by humans. It's about a dream about an apocalyptic mega-city in which people have destroyed their livelihoods. A young woman wakes up from this dream and realizes that it is not too late to rethink our society's way of life in order to enable future generations to live in a healthy environment.

Lara Secord-Haid, soprano
The Braunschweig Cathedral Choir
The Braunschweig State Orchestra
Elke Lindemann, conductor