Dvořák: Stabat Mater, Op. 58

Description

Antonín Dvořák's impressive Stabat Mater for soloists, chorus and orchestra is probably the best-known of the composer's sacred works. Some painful experiences – in 1875 his first daughter died, and in 1877 he lost two other children in quick succession – may have led to Dvořák's preoccupation with the suffering of the Mother of God, who stands weeping beneath the cross of her son. The music enters into the different moods of the liturgical texts with great sensitivity. Nine movements in slow to moderate tempi serve as a kind of Passion meditation, before the ecstasy of a vision of the resurrection wins the upper hand at the end of the tenth movement.