Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

Two brilliant musical minds come together in one concert, March 9, 2016 at 7.30 pm, in Alix Goolden Hall.

Peter Butterfield conducts the 80-member Victoria Philharmonic Choir, members of the Victoria Symphony, and a roster of distinguished soloists – soprano Donna Brown, mezzo-soprano Sarah Fryer, tenor Benjamin Butterfield and bass Gary Relyea, in the performance of Mozart’s Requiem and Haydn’s Theresienmesse (Theresa Mass).

This concert is also a musical reunion for VPC Music Director Peter Butterfield and Donna Brown, who performed the solos on a recording of Haydn Masses conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, in 1993. The cd was awarded the BBC Recording of the Month when it was released. Another Canadian was the baritone soloist, Gerald Finley.

The history of Mozart’s Requiem is filled with mysteries and strange stories; some of them may even be true. Most experts say it was secretly commissioned by a quirky Count who wanted to pass the work off as his own. And we know that Mozart died at age 35 of rheumatic fever (not poisoning!) before he’d finished it; some say the first few bars of the Lacrymosa movement were the last he ever wrote. The work was tidied up and completed by Mozart’s composition pupil, Sussmayr, but whether he was working from scraps of paper and verbal instructions left by Mozart, or it came from his own talent, scholars have been arguing about since 1791. Regardless of who wrote which notes, this Requiem is filled with anger, grief, and quiet beauty.

Joseph Haydn’s Theresa Mass sparkles with exuberant singing and trumpet fanfares. Despite its brilliance, it’s less often performed than his “Nelson” Mass, another of the series Haydn composed near the end of his life.

Concert tickets are $30 regular / $15 student / free for children 12 & under, from Ivy’s Bookshop, Munro’s Books, The Shieling, Long & McQuade and Tanner’s Books; online at vpchoir.ca and possibly at the door.

This concert is made possible in part by a generous grant through the Victoria Foundation. For more information, please visit vpchoir.ca