The melody from Beethoven’s ninth is already hidden in Mozart, whose Idomeneo is reminiscent of the biblical Abraham with a forgotten colleague, Wolfgang Rihm listens to the past once more: nice surprises in the overture spiritual.
“Victim” has long been circulating as a swear word. In Salzburg, on the other hand, it is tantamount to a title of nobility these days: the overture spiritual on the subject of “Sacrificium” with music from the Renaissance to the present shows how sacrifice was dealt with in a religious and secular context – whether for the higher glory of God or as a complaint worst inhumanity or in dealing with one’s own fate.
For example, anyone who sacrificed a significant part of the day to three concerts on Saturday received a gift that was partly expected and hoped for, but partly surprising. Astonishment spread in the morning at the first Mozart matinee with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. It started with Joseph Haydns D minor symphony Hob. I:26. The three-movement work owes its nickname “Lamentatione” to incorporated chorale motifs from the repertoire of Holy Week or even a use of a passion play. In any case, Andrew Manze did not drench it in meditative devotion, but gave it powerfully like a woodcut, rather as a harshly expressive depiction of the violence of the passion story – or as an example of Haydn’s storm and stress phase. Since there is an “unfinal”-sounding, altogether strange minuet at the end, not a hand in the audience moved.
