The Spanish port city of Cádiz on Good Friday in the year 1787. In the chapel of devotion beneath the church of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, windows and walls have been draped with black cloth. A single lamp illuminates the room slightly, where the bishop speaks from the pulpit about the seven words of Jesus on the cross. After each of his reflections, he kneels before the altar while contemplative instrumental passages sound. The demanding task of composing these was assigned to none other than Joseph Haydn: “It was certainly one of my most difficult tasks, to let seven adagios follow one another without an underlying text, from free imagination, which should not tire the listener and awaken in him all the feelings that were in the sense of each of the words spoken by the dying Redeemer.” Now, the similarly great challenge of interpreting these passages in Haydn's sense is taken on by the chosen Cologne musicians Andreas Staier and Ludus Instrumentalis on the fortepiano and in the string quartet.

The concert will be recorded by Deutschlandfunk.

On the same evening, the concert by the Ensemble Marsyas Baroque and Martí Corbera "La vida es sueño - Sound and Movement Spaces between Violent Ecstasies and Self-Reflection" will take place from 7 to 8 PM at the Alte Feuerwache. Combination tickets for both events are available.