Wells Cathedral

Saturday 3rd August 2002  7pm

Mozart ‘Solemn Vespers’

(Vesperae solennes de Confessore K339)

Mozart Exsultate, Jubilate K165

Stravinsky Mass

Beethoven Mass in C

SOMERSET CHAMBER CHOIR

with WESSEX CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Brian Howells leader

Jeni Bern soprano    Kathryn Turpin mezzo-soprano

Mark Wilde tenor    Simon Kirkbride bass

Graham Caldbeck conductor

Sponsored by Palmer Snell Chartered Surveyors

The Somerset Chamber Choir

is one of the South West’s leading young choirs

Over the years the choir has firmly established itself as among the best. Four great works by Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky, three composers who took the musical world by storm and changed it for ever, are brought together in the incomparable setting of Wells Cathedral in a concert full of vivid contrasts. 

Beethoven’s majestic Mass in C was commissioned by Haydn’s patron, Prince Esterhazy, and was composed in 1807 at the same time as the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the Fourth Piano Concerto. From the gentle, unaccompanied opening Kyrie, through the blazing outburst of the full orchestral, solo and choral forces the Gloria, to the closing heartfelt Agnus Dei, Beethoven felt that he had treated the text in a manner in which it has rarely been treated, and in so doing produced a masterpiece. 

The same certainly can also be said of Stravinsky’s neo-classical Mass for choir, soloists and wind instruments written in 1948, almost a century and a half later. Inspired by his study of the Mozart’s masses to write a Mass for his own time, Stravinsky composed one of the most distinctively original choral works of the twentieth century. His short, ritual-like setting strips away the layers of musical varnish acquired by the text in centuries of previous settings, rather in the manner of the restoration of a great Renaissance fresco, and in the process refreshes and renews our perception of the colours and meaning of these familiar words in the process. 

Two of Mozart’s most famous vocal works are also featured in the programme. The Solemn Vespers (Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K339), composed when Mozart was still in his mid- twenties, are simply breathtaking in their verve and inventiveness. The most familiar movement is perhaps Laudate Dominum, where the soprano soloist weaves her sublime, leisurely melody against a beautiful choral and orchestral backcloth. However, undoubtedly this is a work that belongs principally to the choir, whose effervescent and hugely varied music exudes a heart-warming joie de vivre. Exsultate, Jubilate, Mozart’s best-known motet for soprano and orchestra, culminates in the celebrated ‘Alleluia’ whose vitality and joy is guaranteed to lift the listeners. Spirits as high as the soloist’s top C.

The right is reserved, without incurring liability, to substitute artists and to vary the programme for reasons beyond our control, although these details are correct at the time of going to press.