Stabat Mater

The Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi represents one of the purest and most poignant expressions of 18th-century sacred music. Composed in 1736, in the brief period of time preceding the composer's untimely death, this masterpiece is imbued with a sorrowful lyricism that manages to fuse spiritual depth and emotional immediacy. Two voices, a small instrumental ensemble and a text of extraordinary emotional force: these elements are enough for Pergolesi to delicately and intensely render the pain of the Virgin at the foot of the cross.
The writing moves between formal simplicity and a dramatic sensitivity that seems to inherit the language of opera, transfiguring it in a meditative key. This balance between theatre and devotion is one of the most distinctive features of the 18th century Neapolitan musical school, a context rich in highly refined personalities, capable of combining the rigour of counterpoint with the expressiveness of the new galant style.
The Lamentations for the Holy Week by Francesco Durante, a central composer in the Neapolitan panorama and a reference figure for generations of pupils, are also within this same stylistic horizon. Two fragments from these works – also conceived for the Holy Week liturgy – complete the programme, offering the listener further examples of the inner tension, melodic care and affective force that characterise the sacred writing of that time.
With no break in continuity, the concert invites the listener on a sonorous journey into the baroque spirituality of the Neapolitan area, bringing together two different but profoundly related voices in a language that still knows how to touch the heart and soul.