Sofia Gubaidulina
Photo: Remy Franck
The world premiere performance of Sofia Gubaidulina’s The Wrath of God, a Festival commission, has been postponed from 2019 to 2020 by the Salzburg Easter Festival. The organizer says: « Despite her advanced age, Sofia Gubaidulina has for many months been devoting all her energies to her commission from the Salzburg Easter Festival, a fact to which the Festival would like to pay tribute.However, this work – which takes up ideas from her recent oratorio Über Liebe und Hass (‘On Love and Hatred’) – has only just been completed. It has thus been impossible to organise the rehearsal schedule so as to give its world première at the 2019 Easter Festival. In order to do justice to the work, the composer has approved postponing its premiere by a year. »
The Wrath of God will thus be given its first performance by Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden on 6 April 2020. The press relases says: « Since the composer specifically dedicates this work ‘to the great Beethoven’, it seems especially appropriate that it should receive its world première in a Beethoven year (for 2020 marks the composer’s 250th birthday). »
