Sogno di Stabat Mater

‘I composed Sogno di Stabat Mater at Gidon Kremer's request specifically for his recording project on the Nonesuch label. This work is a shorter version of my Dialogues on Stabat Mater, co-commissioned by the Bremen and Lucerne Music Festivals.
This work is an experiment. On one hand, the goal was to transcribe selected movements from Pergolesi’s celebrated masterpiece into a concerto grosso for violin, viola and chamber orchestra while remaining truthful to the spirit of the original work, thus transcribing a sacred vocal work into an abstract instrumental one. On the other hand, I hoped to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject. I based this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic aesthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which was much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal just as pain is universal, though its expressions may vary according to cultural or religious backgrounds. A dialogue can happen at different levels. Is it a dialogue between mother and child,a beginning and an end, musician and audience, soli and tutti, loneliness and understanding? Perhaps, after all, the difference is not that great between vocal and purely instrumental, sacred language and the vernacular, monologue and dialogue, reality and dream? Any prayer is a dialogue even though the addressee may not appear present. Whom am I addressing this to?‘
(Lera Auerbach)