What you will hear
The music you may hear
A listening guide to the Mirror Chapel programmes: Vivaldi's Spring and Summer, Mozart's Lacrimosa, Smetana's Vltava, Bach, Pachelbel and Beethoven.
Reserve your seat in the chapel ↗How to listen to an hour of favourites
The Mirror Chapel concert is built from pieces you may already know, played by a chamber group with a soprano, a solo violin and an organ or a piano. That changes how the music reaches you. Orchestral works come in a smaller sound, and the soloists are close enough that you can watch their hands. You don't need to prepare, but a few minutes of background on each piece below gives you something to listen for. Two programmes are shown for the concert, so not every piece here appears at every time.
Vivaldi: Spring and Summer
Spring and Summer are the first two of Vivaldi's four violin concertos known as The Four Seasons, written around 1718 to 1723 and published in 1725. Vivaldi issued each concerto with a sonnet, and the music follows the poem line by line. In Spring's slow movement, the barking of a goatherd's dog is heard in the violas. A full performance of Spring takes about 10 minutes, and Summer about 11, so the two fill roughly a third of the hour.
Mozart: the Lacrimosa
Mozart died in 1791 with his Requiem unfinished. His manuscript shows the opening movement finished and detailed drafts of several others, and the Lacrimosa breaks off after its first eight bars. Other composers completed the work, with Joseph Eybler and then Franz Xaver Süssmayr filling in the rest. The movement begins on a rocking, sighing rhythm that builds, set to the words that mean 'that tearful day'. In a chamber concert the piece is scaled to a small ensemble, so listen for how much weight a few players can give it.
Smetana: the Vltava
The Vltava, also called The Moldau, is the second of six symphonic poems in Smetana's Má vlast, composed in 1874 and first performed in 1875. It lasts about thirteen minutes and holds his most famous tune. Smetana wrote his own note on it: the river rises from two small springs, flows through woods and past a farmers' wedding, tumbles through the St John's Rapids, then widens and runs past Vyšehrad towards Prague. It is the piece in the programme that most clearly belongs to this city.
Bach and Pachelbel
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is an organ showpiece, and appears in one of the two programmes. A few scholars have questioned since 1981 whether Bach composed it, though others, including the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, believe he did. Pachelbel's Canon, also in one programme, was written for three violins and a bass line, and the same melody is played in staggered entries, each voice following the one before. Both pieces belong to the Baroque era, the same as the chapel.
Beethoven's Fifth and Mozart's G minor symphony
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, composed between 1804 and 1808, opens with four notes, three short and one long, often described as fate knocking at the door. The motif returns throughout the movement, which makes it easy to follow even in a reduced ensemble. Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor was entered in his own catalogue on 25 July 1788, and appears in one of the programmes. Both are movements taken from larger works, so expect an excerpt of each, not the whole symphony.
A simple way to prepare
If you want to arrive prepared, spend thirteen minutes with the Vltava and recognise its main tune, then listen once to the opening of Beethoven's Fifth. That covers two of the pieces most likely to be in your programme. Check the programme shown for your date to see which others appear. Afterwards, if one piece caught you, search for a full recording, because the hour shows you the highlights, and the complete works are longer than the concert's time allows.
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