Haydn and Ortiz

Resistance and Revolution

📍 This event takes place at Powell Hall

🕒 2 hours (including intermission)

Saturday, Mar 20, 2027, 7:30pm View Subscriptions Sunday, Mar 21, 2027, 3:00pm View Subscriptions

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Program

Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor
St. Louis Symphony Chorus | Erin Freeman, director

Gabriela Ortiz Revolución diamantina (Glitter Revolution)
Joseph Haydn Missa in Angustiis (Mass for Troubled Times)

About this Concert

Resistance, protest, and solidarity echo down through the centuries in this concert. Gabriela Ortiz’s powerful new ballet score is pertinent and critical, expressing a multitude of emotions surrounding the topic of violence against women. Inspired by Mexico’s Glitter Revolution of 2019 and the 2020 International Women’s March, Ortiz’s music calls for revolution and unity. The St. Louis Symphony Chorus joins in with Haydn’s Mass for Troubled Times, itself a defiant and triumphant response to the trauma of war and invasion.

- Haydn’s biographer, H.C. Robbins Landon, labeled the Mass for Troubled Times as Haydn’s “greatest single composition.” It was composed during a particularly anxious period in the Napoleonic Wars and later earned the nickname, the Nelson Mass, in honor of the admiral who won numerous victories over Napoleon.
- Gabriela Ortiz was the recipient of three Grammy Awards in 2025. Her recording of Revolución diamantina was named Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Orchestral Performance, and Best Classical Compendium. She has worked with conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto for more than three decades.
- In response to recent marches and protests, including the International Women’s Day events in 2020, Ortiz said, “I really believe that we have to stand together. That’s why, you know, in the last movement [of Revolución diamantina], the only word that they say is ‘todas,’ everybody.”