Conducted by Richard Cock.
This will be a concert containing music by the great masters from the Age of Reason.
The Requiem in C minor for mixed chorus was written by Luigi Cherubini in 1816 and premiered 21 January 1817 at a commemoration service for Louis XVI of France on the twenty-third anniversary of his beheading during the French Revolution. In 1834 the work was prohibited by the archbishop of Paris because of its use of women’s voices, and in 1836 Cherubini wrote a second Requiem in D minor for men’s chorus. We will be performing the original work – which was greatly admired by Beethoven, Schumann & Brahms.
Joseph Haydn‘s Concerto per il Clarino, (Trumpet Concerto in E flat major) was written in 1796 for his long-time friend Anton Weidinger. Anton Weidinger developed a keyed trumpet which could play chromatically throughout its entire range. Before this, the trumpet was valve-less and could only play a limited range of harmonic notes by altering the vibration of the lips. Most of these harmonic notes were clustered in the higher registers, so previous trumpet concertos could only play melodically with the high register (e.g., Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2). Haydn’s concerto includes melodies in the middle and lower register, exploiting the capabilities of the new instrument.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his 4 act opera Le nozze di Figaro in 1786. The Marriage of Figaro is known as an opera buffa (comic opera) based on a stage comedy of the time. As was typical for the time, The Marriage of Figaro opens with an instrumental overture – which is what you will hear at the concert! Mozart famously composed the overture just a few hours before the opera’s premiere.
- Further – you can look forward to pieces by, among others, Jean Sibelius, Jerome Kern and Duke Ellington.