Angel Field Festival 2025: HMO - Mozart, Music from the Final Year, 1791
HOPE METROPOLITAN ORCHESTRA AND CHOIR
Barbara Ruzsics (soprano)
Sarah Helsby Hughes (mezzo-soprano)
Hugh Kaliski (tenor)
Joseph Murphy (bass)
Conducted by Stephen Pratt
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Programme:
Overture: The Magic Flute k. 620
Ave Verum Corpus k.618
German dances, k.600, no.s 1,2,4,6
Two excerpts from La Clemenza di Tito k.621:
Aria: Parto, parto
Duet: Ah perdonna
Requiem k.626
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The year 1791 saw Mozart complete several great works – the piano concerto in Bb, k.595, the operas The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito, the Clarinet Concerto k.622, the string quintet in Eb k.614, the much-loved motet Ave Verum Corpus. Amongst other pieces he also produced a string of dances for the Viennese court, chamber music for a newly-invented version of the glass harmonica and the Masonic cantatas k.619 and 623 for his lodge known as ‘The New Crowned Hope’. But arguably the most performed of the works from 1791 is the work he didn’t complete, the Requiem. Since Mozart’s death there have been a number of completions published and this performance will use the earliest and most familiar of those, that by Mozart’s pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr.
Perhaps the least familiar items in the programme are the two excerpts from La Clemenza di Tito. History has not been kind to this great work, which has remained in the shadow of the operas written to libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte (The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosí fan tutte) and The Magic Flute, but it contains some ravishing music – as we hope these two excerpts will demonstrate!
