In tandem with the Wallace Collection’s new exhibition El Greco to Goya, La Grande Chapelle will perform the monumental Beata Dei genitrix mass from Lobo’s Liber primus missarum (1602), inspired by the eponymous motet by Guerrero. A rare opportunity to hear Lobo’s heavenly music performed by one of its leading international exponents amidst the sumptuous surroundings of The Wallace Collection’s Great Gallery, with an opening address by Director of The Wallace Collection, Xavier Bray.

El Greco (1541-1614) had an exact musical contemporary and equal in the Spanish composer Alonso Lobo (1555-1617). Both figures were the product of the cultural flowering of Spain’s siglo de oro, driven predominantly from the ‘Imperial City’ of Toledo where the artists worked at the turn of the 17th century, and it is likely that El Greco heard Lobo’s music at Toledo Cathedral where the composer was maestro de capilla. Parallels have been drawn between their respective aesthetic affinities, with Lobo expressing in sound the equivalent austere, transcendental silence of El Greco’s sacred artworks.

Although revered in his own time, Lobo did not arrive in the 20th century with the same momentum as contemporaries such as Victoria, but the new millennium has witnessed his revival, thanks in part to the pioneering work of the illustrious Spanish ensemble La Grande Chapelle whose world-premiere recordings for the Lauda label have firmly re-established Lobo as one of the great polyphony composers of the European Renaissance.

This event is part of Echoes Festival 2017 organised in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute with the kind support of The Wallace Collection, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música (INAEM) and Wines from Spain.

Click here for more details and to book tickets.

Image above by Noah Shaye