Requiem Brahms
Les Grands Ballets Canadiens

Text from the Les Grands Ballet website:

A monumental work, Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem is one of the most deeply personal and spiritually uplifting compositions by any great composer. With REQUIEM, choreographer Andrew Skeels offers spellbinding staging, with contemporary choreography inspired by the stirring notes of Brahms’s composition.

To begin this double bill, Les Grands Ballets is pleased to present Jeunehomme by Uwe Scholz. On the notes of Mozart’s concerto, the belated German choreographer pays homage to the beauty as well as the melancholy of the great composer’s works.

With Choir, Soloists and Les Grands Ballets Orchestra
Powerful scores by composers Johannes Brahms and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will be carried by the solo voices, choir and Les Grands Ballets Orchestra.

REQUIEM

Choreography: Andrew Skeels
Costumes and sets: Marija Djordjevic
Music: Johannes Brahms
Conductor: Adam Johnson
Solo Soprano: Jacqueline Woodley
Solo Baritone: Dominique Côté
Duration: 60 minutes

JEUNEHOMME

Choreographer: Uwe Scholz
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 9 in E♭ major, K. 271, known as the Jeunehomme concerto
Conductor: Adam Johnson
Solo Piano : Rosalie Asselin
Costumes: Uwe Scholz
Run time: 34 minutes

Uwe Scholz (1958–2004) was inspired by the joy found in the great Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s works to create this 21-dancer piece. It premiered at the Ballets de Monte-Carlo in 1986 and was added to the Ballet du Rhin’s repertoire in 1990. It centres around six couples from the corps de ballet and two couples who each perform a pas de deux. The work ends with a solo dancer playing Mozart himself. Uwe Scholz follows a very classical three-movement structure: a fast first movement (allegro), a slow second movement (andantino) and a faster finale (presto).

Mozart composed the Jeunehomme Concerto when he was just 21. A critical success, the work was said to have been composed for Victoire Jenamy (incorrectly understood by Mozart as “Jeunehomme”), daughter of dancer and ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre.

Johannes Brahms’ A German Requiem is an elegy created following the loss of his mentor, composer Robert Schumann, and of his mother. It is one of the most deeply personal and spiritually uplifting compositions by any great composer, yet Brahms was still a young man in his early thirties when he wrote it. Inspired by the solemn beauty of the piece, choreographer Andrew Skeels presents a poignant work that explores the profundity of human connections. In this strong, meditative creation, he evokes the memory of those who leave but who stay with us nonetheless.