Evento

Central City Chorus presents "Amadeus"

Central City Chorus, under the musical direction of Phillip Cheah, opens its 38th season with the sacred choral works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that were written in the final months of his life: the sublime "Ave verum corpus" and the haunting (and unfinished) "Requiem". The concert will be held at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church on West 87th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, December 8th at 7:00pm. Joining the Chorus are soprano Ava Pine, mezzo-soprano Catherine Hedberg, tenor Nathaniel Adams, and bass Daniel Moore, with the internationally acclaimed REBEL Baroque Orchestra.

There is hardly a more eloquent document to be linked with Mozart's musical biography than his unfinished "Requiem", a work that has long been shrouded in legend and mystery and whose artistic merit (and even its authenticity) has been the subject of heated and acrimonious debate almost from the moment of the composer's death. It creates the awareness of an irretrievable loss, one that clearly extends beyond the Requiem fragment left by Mozart and casting a light on the much larger fragment of a tragically abbreviated life's work. The Corpus Christi motet, "Ave verum corpus", written just six months before the "Requiem", marked a shift in Mozart's compositional direction away from opera and back to the genre of sacred music (which he had not done so since leaving Salzburg). Its transparent yet compact style of four-part vocal shows this exquisite musical gem foreshadowing the developments which were to come in the "Requiem".

Tickets are $30 ($25 student/seniors) at the door or $25 in advance. For more information, please visit www.centralcitychorus.org.