Near North Voices performing Mozart’s Requiem

Near North Voices, North Bay’s University-Community choir presents Mozart’s famous Requiem in concert on Sunday March 30, 7:30 p.m., at St. Andrews United Church in North Bay. The performance includes members of the North Bay Symphony, and features guest soloists and instrumentalists from across the province.Mozart’s Requiem Mass has mystified and thrilled generations of performers and listeners. Left incomplete at the time of the composer’s untimely death in 1791 at the age of 35, its completion was subsequently undertaken by a series of lesser composers, leading to the work that most people know today.

TheRequiem received renewed public interest following the well-known 1984 filmAmadeus, which featured a fictionalized account of Mozart’s later life and “death-by-composition” at the hands of his “nemesis,” Antonio Salieri.

Edited and re-composed by Harvard Mozart scholar Robert D. Levin, the work takes on new levels of musical finesse and historical authenticity to show it as it might have sounded in Mozart’s time.

"We could have chosen to perform theRequiem as completed after Mozart’s death by Franz Süssmayr. That’s the version most people know; it’s shorter and is a much easier sing,” said Dr. Adam Adler, artistic director of Near North Voices.  “However, as an academic musician, I was intrigued by Levin’s scholarly approach to this version, particularly his more transparent orchestration that highlights both choir and text. The audience will also be introduced to an entirely new movement, the Amen that Levin reconstructed from a compositional fragment discovered in the 1960s.”

The first half of the concert will feature the Canadian premiere of Heyr Himna Smiður, a hymn text written by a 12th century Icelandic chieftain and set to music by contemporary composer Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson (1938-2013), that recently went viral online with an ad hoc performance in a train station by the Icelandic group Árstíðir.

Also featured will be the northern Ontario premiere ofWhen You Are Old, a setting of W.B. Yeats’ poem of the same title for SSA (soprano/soprano/alto) choir with string orchestra, composed by Adler.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students, and can be purchased at Gulliver’s Quality Books and Toys, or from Near North Voices members. 

For further information, please call (705) 474-3461, ext.4432 or go towww.nearnorthvoices.com .