Hans Pfitzner, even more than most composers (more publically, at least), was deeply concerned with his legacy as a great artist. He self-consciously regarded Palestrina as his best hope for securing his legacy in the pantheon of the greatest, so he put himself under immense pressure to create an unquestionable masterpiece. He couldn't have picked a more autobiographically apt topic: Palestrina, the 16th century composer on whose shoulders rested the fate of Western liturgical music, based on the success of a Mass he was ...
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Hans Pfitzner, even more than most composers (more publically, at least), was deeply concerned with his legacy as a great artist. He self-consciously regarded Palestrina as his best hope for securing his legacy in the pantheon of the greatest, so he put himself under immense pressure to create an unquestionable masterpiece. He couldn't have picked a more autobiographically apt topic: Palestrina, the 16th century composer on whose shoulders rested the fate of Western liturgical music, based on the success of a Mass he was composing under pressure from the Council of Trent. History has not been unanimous in its assessment of the opera and it has never been part of the standard repertoire, but it's an impressive, sometimes eccentric work, unlike quite any other, and it deserves revival. Oper Frankfurt gives it a bang-up production led by Kirill Petrenko leading Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester. Petrenko gives dramatic shape to the sprawling score, whose long second act consists entirely of a...
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