A model rendition of Mozart's ever-popular death mass
-TROW 

After its resounding success two years ago, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century once again joins forces with Cappella Amsterdam for one of the finest works in the classical repertoire. Mozart's Requiem. A stately work about death and mourning, but oh so magnificent and emotional. For forty years this iconic work has been on the orchestra's lectern, and still it does not bore. Every note and bar never ceases to surprise. A true masterpiece.  

In the first half, the orchestra plays another Mozart masterpiece: Symphony No. 40. As with Beethoven's fifth, the whole world knows the first few bars, but this world-famous piece hides many brilliant passages that never surface because it always sticks to the first notes. The Orchestra dusts it off, making Mozart sound like it's the first time you've heard it.  

The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century joins forces once again with recorder player and singer Lucie Horsch. A special program on recorder and voice with works by J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and a brand new work by Reza Namavar. Old music in a new way; new music inspired by old masters.

Bach wrote no solo works for recorder, and yet the evening opens and closes with a concerto by the German grand master. The opening was arranged by founder of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century Frans Brüggen; the closing piece Lucie Horsch herself arranged for her instrument. This is how Bach sounded if he did compose for recorder!

The Latin name for recorder "ricordare la voce," literally means "remembering the voice. Lucie takes it to the test. She arranges Bach's concerto in a minor for recorder and brings the aria "Stirb in mir, Welt" back to its vocal roots.

Especially for this program, composer Reza Namavar is writing a new work inspired by Vivaldi's double concerto in a minor. The double violin concerto becomes a violin recorder concerto.

Haydn and Mozart were both connoisseurs (in music and life) of human passions: elevated, loving, violent, uncertain, spiritual and secular. "Passione" is a journey through the extremes of human feeling. The overture of Haydn's first oratorio, Il ritorno di Tobia, is a brilliant study in contrasts, from somber foreboding to dizzying virtuosity. It ends with a harmonic ambivalence that will raise many an eyebrow, especially at the time. 

Mozart's tender expressions in his early concert aria "Alcandro, lo confesso" were his first nods to the soprano Aloysia Weber, with whom he soon fell in love. Haydn's Passion Symphony is a secular work with theatrical origins, which later got its name because of a performance at Passion time shortly after the ban on secular music was lifted. It contrasts the serious and the buffo in the finest Haydn style. Two of Mozart's masterpieces complete the program: his stunning "Ch'io mi scordi di te" for soprano and piano obbligato, which expresses unwavering, loving loyalty in the face of great adversity, and his final Viennese piano concerto in C major: a piece that perfectly balances light and shade, sorrow and joy, and ends in deep, glorious affirmation.