Central City Chorus Presents “AMADEUS: Mozart’s Requiem and Ave verum corpus”

New York, NY - Central City Chorus, directed by Phillip Cheah, opens its 38th season with “AMADEUS”, a musical tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with his final pieces of sacred music: the exquisite motet Ave verum corpus and the haunting and powerful Requiem which was left incomplete at the composer’s death on December 5th, 1791. 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 7:00 p.m. Joining the Chorus are musical guests soprano Ava Pine, mezzo-soprano Catherine Hedberg, tenor Nathaniel Adams, and bass Daniel Moore, with the Chorus’ regular instrumental collaborators, the internationally acclaimed REBEL Baroque Orchestra led by Jörg-Michael Schwarz and Karen Marie Marmer.

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, its artistic merit (and even authenticity) has been the subject of much heated and acrimonious debate almost from the moment of the composer’s death.  This creates the awareness of an irretrievable loss, one that clearly extends beyond the Requiem fragment and casts a light on the much larger fragment of a tragically abbreviated life’s work. “AMADEUS” presents the version of the Requiem which was completed in 1792 by Mozart’s student, Franz Xaver Süßmayr. The motet Ave verum corpus was written less than six months before Mozart’s death while the composer was in the middle of writing his final opera Die Zauberflöte. Composed for Anton Stoll, the Kapellmeister of St. Stephan in Baden as well as a friend of Mozart and Joseph Haydn, the work foreshadows aspects of the Requiem with its declamatory gesture, textures, and integration of forward-and backward-looking stylistic elements through a simplicity of means.

Tickets for “AMADEUS” are $30 ($25 student/seniors) at the door, $25 in advance.

http://bit.ly/cccamadeus

For more information, please visit www.centralcitychorus.org.