Anton Bruckner was born 200 years ago this year. To hear his choral music with fresh ears, we have placed his celebrated a cappella motets together with unlikely bedfellows, above all the sacred motets of Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613).

Richard Wagner was one of Bruckner’s musical heroes, and in his motets Bruckner manages to distil a hyper-romantic and highly expressive idiom into a compact form which otherwise eluded both of them.

250 years earlier, Gesualdo was experimenting with ear- and mind-bending chromatic expressionism and enharmonic shifts in a remarkably similar way. Both Bruckner and Gesualdo were outsiders, were strongly led by their Catholic faith, and showed signs of mental instability. The tormented passion of their music seems to reach out across the centuries.

Palestrina arr. Wagner Stabat Mater
Bruckner Postlude in D minor, WAB 126
Gesualdo Illumina faciem tuam
Bruckner Christus factus est, WAB 11
Gesualdo Ave dulcissima Maria
Bruckner Ave Maria, WAB 6

Interval

Bruckner Prelude & Fugue in C minor, WAB 131
Lotti Crucifixus (a 8)
GesualdoTribulationem et dolorem
Bruckner Os justi, WAB 30
Gesualdo O vos omnes (a 5)
Bruckner Salvum fac populum tuum, WAB 40
Gesualdo Peccantem me quotidie
Bruckner Vexilla regis, WAB 51
Gesualdo Laboravi in gemitu meo
Bruckner Locus iste, WAB 23

Monteverdi Choir
Jonathan Sells Conductor
James Johnstone Organ

In this performance, Peter Edge will sing bass in the Monteverdi Choir