“Recollection, remembrance, thought, awareness, time, events, memorial... the Latin concept “memoria” conveys different aspects shared by the music of Victoria, Cage and Feldman,” conductor Florian Helgath says of the choral programme he will conduct this summer in the monumental archetecture and acoustics of the Maschinenhalle at Zeche Zollern in Dortmund. Almost four centuries lie between ‘Officium defunctorum’ by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomas Luis de Victoria and the moving ‘Rothko Chapel’ by the American composer Morton Feldman. While Victoria wrote a polyphonic mass for the death of King Philip II of Spain’s sister, Feldman wrote to commemorate the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He composed this introverted choral work as an homage to the painter Mark Rothko. It was first performed at the Rothko Chapel, the site of ecumenical worship in Houston, Texas, for which Rothko created 14 commissioned paintings.