Dvořák’s STABAT MATER
Mayfield Festival Choir Autumn Concert 2025
Mayfield Festival Choir directed by Jeremy Summerly
Ripieno Players
Soloists
Sofia Kirwan-Baez
Alexandria Moon
Edward Birchinall
Francis Melville
It was the Stabat mater that alerted British audiences to Antonín Dvořák’s greatness as a composer. The Stabat mater was performed in London in the early 1880s (in the newly-built Royal Albert Hall), and it had been written sporadically at a difficult point in the Czech composer’s life. Dvořák was in his mid-thirties when he was composing the Stabat mater – at a time when he lost his first three children within the space of two years. Inevitably, this series of bereavements coloured Dvořák’s approach to the setting of this heartfelt 13th-century text. That said, there is no self-pity in the Stabat mater. Tune after glorious tune fills a work that portrays every positive emotion on the spectrum: fear, awe, fervour, patriotism, love, and joy; all of which ultimately lead to triumph in the piece’s closing section.
Because Dvořák is so well known for his symphonies, operas, and Slavonic Dances, it is easy to overlook his sacred music. But Dvořák was working as a church musician in Prague while he wrote the Stabat mater, and his deep religious conviction and unshakeable faith in humanity are evident in every bar of his great oratorio. For this performance, Mayfield Festival Choir will be joined, as usual, by the Ripieno Players and four young vocal soloists, who will be led by the incomparable Soprano, Sofia Kirwan-Baez, whose presence in Mayfield is always greeted with well-deserved high expectations.
Box Office opens: 5 October 2025
This concert is promoted by Mayfield Festival Choir and supported by the the Mayfield Festival
