Requiems are not your usual fare when its comes to holiday music.
One usually turns to brighter, more uplifting music.
….And yet last weekend’s performances at the UW-Madison of Karol Szymanowski’s darkly moody “Stabat Mater” and especially Mozart’s poignant Requiem felt right for the season. They helped set up a heart-felt and very non-materialist, alternative mood for the holidays. One left those works, and those performances of them, awed by beauty and pensive about life.