Worcestershire Young Singers/ESO
Malcolm Goldring - conductor
WAS Mozart’s Requiem written for his own death? The legends about this idea are well-documented. The words, like other Requiems, have a strong despondent element to them. But, I think, the music itself is curiously animated, so I sit on the fence as to whether or not he was writing it for himself.
Saturday night’s performance at the cathedral involved a very sizeable chorus - the Worcestershire Youth Singers - who with Malcolm Goldring conducting and the English Symphony Orchestra providing a steely contribution, were able to demonstrate the Requiem’s animated and tragic qualities. The soloists, Mary Nelson, Emma Selway, Nathan Vale and Quentin Hayes, were remarkable as well.
Although the first piece in the concert, Bob Chilcott’s Jubilate (Chilcott was born in 1955) doesn’t in my view match the ability of Mozart’s Requiem to grip its audience, it was creditable enough.
Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E flat involved Malcolm Goldring taking care of beginnings and ends of phrases as though they were babies in cots. He also seems to understand the work’s whole architecture.
With music like this, the ‘Sing Mozart’ project, involving pupils, students and staff from various academic institutions in the area as well as Worcester Festival Choral Society and the Midland Festival Chorus is surely something to be cherished.
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