Ton Koopman conducts Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s genius is celebrated this season at the Malibran Theatre in Venice. Mozart’s works will be performed by the highly regarded La Fenice Orchestra and Choir under the baton of the talented Dutch conductor Ton Koopman, also a renowned organist. An accomplished musicologist, too, he holds professorships at both the Royal Conservatory of The Hague as well as the University of Leiden. A trio of masterful works by Mozart has been selected for the programme, 'Ave verum corpus' Motet for orchestra in D major K 618, the Coronation Mass for soloists, choir, organ and orchestra in C major K 317 and, finally, his Symphony No. 40 in G minor K 550.
The concert opens with Ave verum corpus, a primarily vocal piece of music which also features strings and an organ as instrumental accompaniment. Mozart wrote this sacred music while he was also composing The Magic Flute, the celebrated two-act opera which would become one of the highlights of his career. The motet is a sacred piece that exemplifies much of the great maestro's diverse skill as a composer, providing insights into his style in 1791 when his wife, Constanze, was pregnant with the family's sixth child. Mozart produced this musical setting of the Latin hymn of the same name for a friend, Anton Stoll, while he was visiting Constanze in Baden bei Wien, where Stoll was working. It was completed in June 1791, likely ready for Trinity Sunday that month, just a few months before Mozart's untimely death later that year.
Composed in March 1779, in advance of that year's Easter Sunday mass at Salzburg cathedral, Mozart's Coronation Mass follows. This work is arranged for soloists, a choir, an organ and orchestra in six movements. There are 17 known settings for the mass associated with Mozart and this one is perhaps the most famous of them all, possibly because of its compelling rhythmic qualities which are particularly obvious in the first three movements. There is a noteworthy soprano solo in the final movement, the Agnus Dei, which some musicologists have noted shows similarities to Mozart's compositional style in Le nozze di Figaro from 1786.
The concert concludes with a rendition of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K 550, one of his most popular orchestral works. It is probable that the composer never heard the work being performed but some scholars suggest otherwise. Either way, Mozart designated the 40th as a completed work in his own catalogue on 25 July 1788. Two versions of the score in his own hand exist, one notable for a pair of clarinets in the orchestration, something that is missing in the other. Arranged in four movements, the finale is marked by Mozart's sublime use of the chromatic scale.
This concert, with three distinctive Mozart works and a distinguished conductor who is known for his great subtlety, brings powerful symphonic and sacred music to the Venetian stage.