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"Requiem for the victims of all wars", the concert conducted by Riccardo Muti for the 100th anniversary of the Great War. Story and photos

Riccardo Muti chose the Requiem of Giuseppe Verdi for his concert as part of the show "The roads of Friendship 2014."

Sunday, July 6th, at the shrine of Redipuglia (Gorizia), was held the concert entitled "Requiem for the victims of all wars" and dedicated in a special way to the memory of the centenary of the beginning of the Great War

The concert was a co-production of the Ravenna Festival, of which maestro Muti is the landlord, and the cultural event “Mittelfest” which for 23 years continues to be the reference point for cultural summer in Friuli Venezia Giulia and in this way opened the 2014 edition.

In Redipuglia there were thousands of spectators, arrived from the region, the rest of Italy and abroad, but many have also flocked to the square of the Congress the following day, in the Slovenian capital, where the concert was repeated on Monday July 7th in the occasion of the traditional Ljubljana Festival, now in its 62nd edition.

The execution in Ljubljana was very lucky for a number of favorable coincidences that made the concert much more valuable than the gala in Redipuglia. The shrine has aroused strong emotion for the monumental scenery, making vivid the commemoration on the notes of Verdi, but in Ljubljana was the best acoustics to give life to the brilliant performance of the Requiem.

Riccardo Muti was at the direction of the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, European Spirit of Youth Orchestra, which he founded. The added value of the event was to bring together in a single large orchestra musicians representatives of the countries belligerents of the First World War.

So the performers came from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Synphonique Théatre Royal de la Monnaie, the British Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Fondazione Opera Giuseppe Verdi of Trieste, and, of course, the Orkester Slovenske filharmonije.

Even the great choir is born from the aggregation of many representatives of different origins: the Coro Foundation's Opera Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Choir, the Choir of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana. On the evening of Ljubljana also sang the Slovenian Chamber Choir, while in Redipuglia was present the Music Academy of Zagreb, the New Chamber Choir of Budapest “Franz Liszt” and the two choirs of the Conservatory “Tomadini” of Udine and “Tartini” of Trieste.

Riccardo Muti has been able to master the large number of musicians with great confidence and firm gesture.

Just as the last trump dialogues with the immensity of the crowd that the orchestra represents, anticipating the horrible feeling of vague terror that is the breath of mankind in front of the mystery of his own finitude, so the "Lacrimosa" winds so romantically pathetic, pointing out that the death of every man asks the question about the dignity of his extreme heroic act.

The soloists were able to give body to these emotions, raising them strong and decisive, especially the two singers who, taking the limit of the execution, were able to overcome it by becoming respectively the soul of the sweet prayer of quiet and peace and the spirit of deep human unanswered question about his ultimate fate.

Similarly, the effect of the thunder that accompanies the final Hosanna, echoed in the bass drum barking violent lyrical insistence of the "Dies Irae" repeated untiringly as a warning to the inevitability of death, to make room for the clear voice of soprano proposing the opening words of the concluding "Lux aeterna", bringing to mind the dreamy sweetness of hope of those who remain in this world, with their eyes fixed on the monument, memory of the absence of those who are no more.

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