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Combined Choirs with Orchestra - Music of Antonio Salieri
Festival Singers & Wainuiomata Choir
with members of the Wellington Chamber Orchestra
presented
Antonio Salieri - Mass in D and other works
2:30pm Sunday 15 August 2010
at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street, WellingtonWorks:
Mass in D 'Hofkapellmeister-Messe' (1788)
Overture - La tempesta di mare (1778)
Overture - Armida (1771)
Coronation Te Deum (1790).
Antonio Salieri was a fine musician and, according to those who knew him (including Mozart!) a decent person. During his lifetime he enjoyed great success as a composer (particularly of operas and church music), a performer (stepping in on more than one occasion to conduct premieres of Mozart's music when Mozart was unwell) and a teacher – of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt, among others.
His personal and professional reputation took a dive a few years after his death, when Pushkin published a poem fabricating the idea that Salieri poisoned Mozart. This was the 1830 equivalent of today's celebrity gossip columnists interviewing their word processors to create juicy copy to sell magazines, and was at least as destructive. This sorry nonsense was carried on by several 19th-century composers of operas based on the Pushkin piece, and has continued into our own time thanks to Schaeffer's play, also rendered as a film, Amadeus.
The Festival Singers and the Wainuiomata Choir, along with members of the Wellington Chamber Orchestra offered Wellington concert-goers a chance to enjoy a selection of Salieri's music, both sacred and secular.
When appointed Kapellmeister of the Imperial Court in Vienna in 1788, Salieri wrote his Mass in D, which is lovely, tuneful, appropriately dramatic in places, with imaginative use of varied orchestral and choral textures. This opened the concert and was being performed from an authentic edition with the full orchestral forces, including four trumpets. It seems almost certain that this was a NZ premiere.
The concert concluded with another sacred work, rather different in character, the Te Deum composed for the coronation of the new Emperor in 1790 – it is altogether grander, befitting such an occasion.
In between, the Orchestra played two of Salieri's opera overtures; firstly La tempesta di mare ('The storm at sea') which he used for two different operas, and Armida, which is specific to the opera of that title, as it sets up the opening scene with a musically descriptive depiction of events.
David Beattie, the Musical Director of the Wainuiomata Choir who conducted this performance, says “Antonio Salieri was the boy from the town of Legnago in Northern Italy who came to the Viennese Imperial Court and made himself an outstanding career there, retaining his Chapel appointment until 1824 – the longest tenure in the centuries this position existed. As someone who, a few years ago, discovered his own North Italian ancestry, I feel privileged to present this beautiful, expressive music.”
Click the thumbnails below to see bigger images
(photos by Alexander Garside)
Programme for rest of 2010
Here is an outline of the remainder of our programme for 2010. As arrangements are finalised we will show further details on this page.
Helen Brechin’s 100th birthday concert in Palmerston North: Saturday 17 July and/or Sunday 18 July
Singing at the Police College, Porirua - 6 December 2009
Festival Singers performed a selection of Christmas pieces at the annual dinner for people from the Porirua area hosted by the local Lions Club at the Police College.
Here we are in the warm-up room just before going out to sing. Please click the photo to see a larger image. [Photo by Christine Wong.]
Copyright Festival Singers 2009-2010