Evento

Orchestra Seattle | Seattle Chamber Singers: Death + Remembrance

Clinton Smith, conductor
Mark Salman, piano
Lindsay Ohse, soprano
Melissa Plagemann, mezzo-soprano
Wesley Rogers, tenor
Stephen Fish, bass-baritone

Jones: Elegy
Liszt: Totentanz
Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626

Samuel Jones composed his Elegy for string orchestra over the course of four days in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, encapsulating the grief and shock that swept the nation in reaction to a president's death 50 years ago.

Liszt's Totentanz ("Dance of the Dead") consists of a set of variations on the Dies irae melody that has haunted so many composers, including Berlioz and Rachmaninov. For what may be Liszt's most dramatic work for piano and orchestra, we welcome back Mark Salman, a frequent collaborator with Orchestra Seattle over the past two decades and a renowned interpreter of Liszt's music.

The circumstances surrounding Mozart's Requiem remain shrouded in mystery: Count Franz von Walsegg anonymously commissioned the work in remembrance of his late wife, but in actuality may have been hoping to pass the work off as his own. As the composer struggled to complete the work on his deathbed, according to his wife Constanze, he felt as if he were writing his own funeral mass. Although Mozart's untimely death at age 35 prevented him from finishing the Requiem, it has nevertheless become the composer's best-loved choral work.