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.”