Written 27th January 2026
As always, our Christmas concerts were a great success. Two afternoons of music for the whole family – from tiny tots to people in their 90ties.
This year our Charity collection went to Melody Music and Wits Student Benevolent Fund and we collected over R40K – so a big ‘thank you’ to our very generous audiences. The members of the choir had bought Christmas presents for children who would otherwise go without – the beneficiaries were Melody Music and Hearts of Hope. Again, a big ‘thank you’ goes to the members of the choir for this kind gesture.
But now it’s a new year – so what’s up from your favourite choir? Well, first
The Symphony Choir of Johannesburg
are presenting
W A Mozart’s
Requiem
Soloists:
Sinesipho Mnyango: Soprano, Asisipho Petu: Mezzo,
Thomas Erlank: Tenor, Bongani Kubheka: Bass
Sunday 22 February @ 3pm
Linder Auditorium, Parktown
The Phoenix Orchestra
Conducted by Susan Cock
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his early death at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized.
He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Joseph Haydn wrote: “posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years”.
The Requiem in D minor, K. 626. Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year. A completed version dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who commissioned the piece for a Requiem service to commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death on 14 February.
The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated Introit in Mozart’s hand, and detailed drafts of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies irae as far as the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa movement, and the Offertory. It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost “scraps of paper” for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus Dei as his own. Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart’s widow Constanze. She was responsible for a number of stories surrounding the composition of the work, including the claims that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner’s identity, and that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the requiem for his own funeral.
Mozart’s Requiem is a magnificent work – this is a concert you definitely don’t want to miss.
Book now to avoid disappointment – use this link
https://www.quicket.co.za/events/353858-mozart-requiem/
Kind regards,
The Symphony Choir of Johannesburg