Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester

‘Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum!’ - ‘All that has breath, praise the Lord!’ The 150th Psalm of the Old Testament ends with a call to the whole world. Both Igor Stravinsky and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy set this biblical text to music, each in their own style and in different contexts.
Stravinsky chose the Latin Vulgate text for his Symphony of Psalms, which he based his neoclassical choral work on. For the Protestant Mendelssohn, on the other hand, the German text of the Luther Bible was decisive and he initially developed a hymn-like cantata from it, which he later expanded into a large-scale four-movement choral symphony with preceding instrumental movements. Both composers set further biblical texts alongside the hymn of praise and, with their personal compositional styles and instrumentation techniques, achieve very different sound effects.
With the juxtaposition of two such contrasting settings of one and the same psalm, Thomas Guggeis continues the established tradition of the great choral symphonic concerts of the Frankfurt Choral Society and the Museums-Gesellschaft, while at the same time setting completely new accents.
(Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft e.V.)