Boulder Chamber Chorale and Chamber Orchestra join forces Friday

By Peter Alexander Oct. 4 at 12:10 p.m.

Conductor Bahman Saless and the Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO) will join together with Vicki Burrichter and the Boulder Chamber Chorale to perform one of the least known of Mozart’s major works Friday (7:30 p.m., First United Methodist Church; details below).

The C Minor Mass is, alongside the Requiem, one of two major choral works that Mozart left unfinished. Probably because it was never finished, and also because it is a difficult piece to put together, it is not performed very often. 

Mozart began this very large-scale setting of the Ordinary of the Mass—those portions that are performed year-round as opposed to texts that are specific to individual days of the year—in 1782, soon after his marriage to Constanze Weber. Mozart said he started the Mass in honor of his marriage, but he never finished the work. 

The opening Kyrie movement and the Gloria were completed, as were two sections of the Credo, as well as the Sanctus and Benedictus. The remainder of the Credo and the Agnus Dei text were never written. On the basis of the completed movements, a full Mass would have been an extensive work.

Mozart and Constanze visited the composer’s father Leopold in Salzburg in October of 1782, with the completed portions of the Mass in hand. At least some portions of Mozart’s score were performed as part of a service in Salzburg, including Constanze singing Et incarnatus est, a beautiful and difficult soprano solo. What else was performed is unknown, and Mozart never wrote another note of the Mass after the visit to Salzburg.

One theory is that Mozart had started the mass as a gesture to his very religious father, who had not approved of the marriage with Constanze. Having mollified the testy Leopold during his visit, he had no reason to write more, as there were no performance possibilities for a large-scale Mass setting in Vienna, due to the policies of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II.

In any case, the Mass in C minor falls at a transition point in Mozart’s life, at the time not only of his marriage but of his move to Vienna and his emergence as an independent composer. It also represents a new development in his musical style, which came about from his study of the Baroque masterpieces of Bach and Handel. The Mass contains several large-scale fugues and a few movements for double-chorus, which add to the complexity and difficulty of the choral parts.

“Every movement has a different challenge,” Burrichter, who rehearsed the chorus, says. “The double choruses certainly are challenging, in terms of listening to each other, and the fugues are extremely difficult and long. But in spite of the difficulties, we’ve all been thrilled with learning it. As Mozart is, it’s so beautifully melodic, it’s so emotionally powerful, and it’s a treat.”

Saless, who will conduct the performance, shares Burrichter’s appreciation for Mozart’s music. “It’s a beautiful piece, and it has incredibly gorgeous arias,” he says. 

Among the arias, Burrichter points specifically to the one that Mozart wrote for Constanze. “The Et incarnatus est, one of the great soprano solos, is just one of the best things he ever wrote,” she says. “It’s really stunning!”

To sum up the Mass, Burrichter particularly likes to quote Patrick Mackie, who wrote in his book Mozart in Motion that “The C-Minor mass is . . . a sort of total statement on everything music could be . . . (It) has a surging monumentality and a giddy, athletic zip.”

The concert will open with the Colorado premiere of Summation, a brief piece for chorus and orchestra by composers Jim Klein and Ian Jamison. The performance by the BCO was commissioned by Klein, a successful businessman and entrepreneur who works as a visual artist in a studio outside Greeley and owns an art gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. 

“We’re really delighted to showcase music by local Colorado composers,” Saless says. “It’s obvious this piece was inspired by a spiritual experience.”

Klein explains that source of inspiration in his program notes, where he writes “On my daily early morning walk down our farm lane over the decades, I have often asked the question, ‘Who am I?’” One day, while walking with his dog, he writes that the answer came to him in a text that begins “God is in me.” 

WIth that thought in mind, he worked with Jamison to express the text in music. “Hopefully,” he writes, “this internal investment will pass on for future generations.”

In addition to the Boulder performance Friday, the program will be presented at the University of Northern Colorado Commons in Greeley at 3 p.m. Sunday. Links for the purchase of tickets are listed below.

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“Mozart Mass and More”
Boulder Chamber Orchestra with Boulder Chamber Chorale
Bahman Saless, conductor, with sopranos Szilvia Schranz and Moira Murphy; tenor Thomas Bocchu; and baritone Tyler Padgett

• Jim Klein and Ian Jamison: Summation
• Mozart: Mass in C Minor

7:30 p.m. Friday Oct. 6
First United Methodist Church, 1421 Spruce St, Boulder

TICKETS

3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 8
University of Northern Colorado Commons
Beethoven in the Rockies Concert Series

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Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Boulder Chamber Chorale: Mass in C

By Peter Alexander March 30 at 5:45 p.m.

“What are the chances to go to a Beethoven concert and hear something you never heard before?”

Bahman Saless is talking about the next concert he will conduct with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (April 1; details below). The orchestra, with the Boulder Chamber Chorale and soloists, will present Beethoven’s Mass in C major, written at the height of the composer’s fame and accomplishment but rarely performed today. The performance will be introduced by Beethoven’s very dramatic Overture to Coriolanus.

“This is your chance to imagine yourself, having lived in Beethoven’s time, and the master has just announced a new piece of music and you’re going to go hear it,” Saless says. “To me that’s really cool!”

Vicki Burrichter, who leads the Boulder Chamber Chorale and prepared the singers for the performance, thinks the Mass in C should be better known and appreciated. “I don’t really understand why its not more popular,” she says. “I think it’s one of the best choral pieces there is. I absolutely love it.”

When Beethoven wrote his Mass in C in 1807, he was an accomplished composer who already had many of his greatest works to his credit. He had completed his first four symphonies, his first four piano concertos, nine string quartets including the “Razumovksy” quartets Op. 59, and his Violin Concerto, among other works. He would soon complete his Fifth and Sixth symphonies.

Nonetheless, he is believed to have been less secure undertaking the Mass in C. It was his first setting of what had been one of the most important musical forms of the 18^th century and before. Furthermore, the Mass was commissioned by Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, which meant that Beethoven was following in the footsteps of his teacher Joseph Haydn, who had written six highly successful mass settings for the Esterhazy court.

The finished Mass is considered a major work, if somewhat unorthodox for the times—like many of the pieces Beethoven wrote. The musicians didn’t particularly like it and the rehearsals were chaotic, with only one of five altos in the chorus present, leaving the others to sightread the premiere. 

The first performance was not a success. The Prince disliked the Mass, and the work was seldom performed afterwards. Beethoven did only portions of the Mass once in December 1808, on a famous concert that included premieres of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Fantasy for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra.

Performances remain rare, but contemporary judgment of the Mass is more positive. Burrichter summed it up, saying “It’s been overshadowed by (Beethoven’s) Missa Solemnis and the Ninth (Symphony). It’s very dramatic, as only Beethoven can be, it’s immediately emotional from the first bar, and it continues that way the entire time. What Beethoven does with it is the kind of thing that only Beethoven can do.

“It’s not the Ninth in terms of overwhelming power, but I think it comes mighty close.”

The mass lasts less than an hour. To open the concert, Saless selected another work by Beethoven, his Overture to Coriolanus. “To me, that is the most perfect piece of dramatic music,” he says. “There is just nothing like it, because it’s eight minutes long, it carries emotions and content that could be a Mahler Symphony!”

Saless also discovered another reason that Coriolanus makes an ideal opener for the Mass. The overture is written in C minor, and after all of its drama it ends very softly with three unison Cs. This sets up the beginning of the Mass, which begins with the basses singing a unison C. That is followed by a move to C major, which will have immediate impact in performance.

Saless thought, “what kind of effect would that have on the audience?” And he decided it would be “a very Beethoven-esque approach to affecting the audience mentally and emotionally! And the connection from the C minor to just C and then C major makes a lot of sense.”

For audience members hearing the Mass for the first time—which will probably be most—Burrichter has some advice. “The Kyrie that starts (the first movement of the Mass) is just melodically so beautiful. People should listen for the beauty of that melody and then listen for its return at the end. And listen for the way that the soloists intertwine with the orchestra and the chorus.

“I think people will absolutely love it.”

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Beethoven: Mass in C
Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor
With the Boulder Chamber Chorale, Vicki Burrichter, artistic director
Cristin Colvin, soprano; Gabrielle Razafinjatovo, mezzo-soprano; Paul Wolf, tenor; Brandon Tyler Padgett, bass

7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 1
Boulder Seventh-Day Adventist Church
345 Mapleton, Boulder

TICKETS