CBS Choir: Heavenly Harmony
- Date: 21/09/2025 14:00 - 15:30
- Location: Catholic Pro-Cathedral, 373 Manchester Street
- Tickets: $30.00 | $25.00
The concert begins a jubilant setting of the Te Deum from the CBS Choir. This magnificent setting of the traditional song of thanksgiving for great occasions was written for Empress Marie Therese between 1798 and 1800. It is scored for full orchestra and culminates in an exhilarating finale.
Haydn’s Symphony 97 was one of the last of the initial six “London” symphonies composed by Haydn for the impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who had commandeered him in Vienna for his subscription concerts in the Hanover Square concert rooms. But the genteel audience who first heard it in early May 1792 would have been aware that a comfortable social fabric could be torn apart. The same French aristocrats who had commissioned his previous symphonies for performance at the Parisian royal palace were dragged towards an overthrow of the monarchy three months later, and a reign of terror which would claim many of their heads. The declamatory fire in this symphony might be interpreted as either a celebration of pomp and majesty, or a call to arms and the barricades. The young Beethoven used its music as a model for a C major symphony which he never completed. And Haydn’s thundering arpeggio theme with its crashing tonic to dominant cadences seems to prefigure its inversion as the final apotheosis of Beethoven’s fifth symphony.
The major work on the programme is Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, last of the six great Masses he wrote annually at the end of his life, incorporating all his creative genius. It was written for the Princess Esterhazy, whose palace in Eisenstadt is only a few minutes’ walk from the Bergkirche (Church on the Hill), where it was first performed. The Mass takes its name from Haydn's extensive use of wind instruments, possible because in 1802, when it was written, the palace orchestra was at its largest and most impressive. The Kyrie is more sombre than usual with Haydn, and the Benedictus is lighter and more impulsive. Typical of the master symphonist are the monumental fugues which conclude Gloria and Credo, signalled by martial calls from the brass as is the stirring Dona Nobis Pacem which ends the Mass. Just after its highly successful premiere, Haydn wrote ‘a secret voice whispered to me: perhaps your labours will once be a source from which the care-worn, or the man burdened with affairs, can derive a few moments' rest and refreshment.'
For this concert, soloists will be Courtney Hickmott, Melanie Williams, Wally Enright and Chris Whelan. The orchestra will be led by Natalia M. Lomeiko, and the musical director will be Don Whelan.
