Erased Music: Roman Padlewski & Charles Tournemire

Concert

12.9.-13.9.2026

Jahrhunderthalle Bochum

Spiritual music by forgotten masters

A chance discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris recently unearthed a hidden treasure of French church music: La douloureuse passion du Xrist (The Sorrowful Passion of Christ) by the composer and organist Charles Tournemire. At the end of the 1930s, he set the emotional version of the Passion by the mystic Anna Katharina Emmerick to music and died without ever hearing the work performed. At the same time in Warsaw, the then 23-year-old Roman Padlewski composed a moving Stabat Mater. This is one of his few surviving compositions. He died fighting for the resistance during the Warsaw uprising, most of his works were destroyed by the fascists. Two composers from a fractured Europe, yet spiritually connected by their deep faith. They find resonance in Erased Music, a concert series against forgetting, featuring Chorwerk Ruhr and the Bochum Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Florian Helgath.

Cast

- CHORWERK RUHR,
- Bochumer Symphoniker
With
- Jérôme Boutillier (Voix du Christ),
- Axelle Saint-Cirel (La Récitante),
- Enguerrand de Hys (Le Récitant),
- Christian Schmitt (organ)
Conductor
- Florian Helgath

Festival Stories

LISTENING AGAINST OBLIVION

In our Festival Stories, Krystian Lada, Programme Director of the Ruhrtriennale 2024–2026, turns his attention to Polish composer, musician and war hero Roman Padlewski. The Nazi destruction during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 not only took his life but erased a vast portion of materials related to his legacy, including most of his compositions. Until today, Padlewski remains largely unknown to the general public. In Erased Music, the Ruhrtriennale brings both Padlewski’s music and biography out of oblivion