Performance for choir and organ, 5 hours

curated by Mara Ambrozic

artistic advice Yvanoe Kruger

March 2015 - Oratoire du Louvre, Paris

ph Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio

The project COSA RESTA DI NOI - Requiem was implemented specifically for the Oratoire du Louvre, which has supported the production of the project together with Galleria Massimodeluca. Concieved  as a performance for choir and organ, it explores the boundaries between the world of music and the world of visual arts so to reflect on the poetic sense of the European Union. A Union which, in the eyes of the artist, justifies itself not only in a political and financial veil or in regard to the divergencies emerging that are fragilising Europe due to the crisis, but should be interpreted and sought in the founding principles and in the cultural aspects common to all European peoples. 

The performance is therefore based on integrating the motives of the National Anthems of the European countries into the structure and tones of the Requiem in D Minor, K 626 by Wolfgang A. Mozart at the very moment of the performance. This is accomplished by two musicians - the Venetian Giovanni Mancuso and the young French composer Benjamin Patrier-Leituz - through constant live improvisation during the performance and on-site composition.
 

 The four-hour event will be divided into two parts with an interval. It will be an opportunity for the public to observe the creative process of composition and to listen to its performance in the final rehearsal. Montini has conceived a structure based on the typical impact of the artistic performance, which together with the requiem, reflects the themes of Europeanness through consecutive virtuoso repetitions, failures and possible discoveries.  

The project aims not simply at being a musical event, but a place of exchange and of constructive cooperation between the artist, the composers, the conductor and the choir, called upon to improvise on a musical partition that happens simultaneously and in an unpredictable way. Maestro Frédéric Pineau will conduct the musicians and the choir consisting of 100 elements of the Chœur Symphonique des Grandes Écoles de Paris, a partner of the project.  

The performance is the end result of a discussion that we have started with the artist in 2013 and which has seen light in Paris thanks to Yvannoé Kruger, the associate curator of the event. Acknowledgements go to the Presidency and the Presbyteral Council of the Oratorie du Louvre and in particular to Aurélien Peter, François Sarhan, Mélanie Arensma, Valentina Apicerni, Sandrine Pouvreau Rigolet and Sean Barker. Special thanks to Alexander Ponhert for his written contribution to the present libretto, and all the others that will be credited seprately in the project’s catalogue, which will be published after the performance.  

Mara Ambrožič