Two masters and two great choral works

Next Saturday, May 19, the Camerata Musica Chamber Choir will present its fifth concert performing two great choral works with orchestra and soloists - Bach’s inspired Magnificat in D major, and Haydn’s magnificent’ Mass in Time of War.

The concert will be conducted by Asitha Tennekoon, making his debut in this role with Camerata. Bach’s Magnificat in D major is one of his very finest works, a concise masterpiece with joyous five part choruses and solo arias, and festive orchestral writing. He originally set the Magnificat, the Virgin Mary’s song of praise to God, for performance at the service of Vespers on Christmas Day 1723 at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig soon after he became Cantor there. However he revised it in the early 1730’s condensing the work, brightening its key, and enriching its brilliance by adding flutes to the oboes and high, piccolo trumpets. This revised version in D is the one generally performed today.

After Haydn had completed all his symphonies he had a final flowering of his musical genius in the composition of his six late Masses and his oratorio ‘The Creation’, a mature masterpiece and arguably his greatest works. He was inspired in this by his profound Christian faith. And for the Masses he was prompted by his patron Prince Nikolaus II Esterhazy, who in Haydn’s old age asked that his Capellmeister should compose only one work each year- a new mass to celebrate the name day of his wife, the Princess Maria.

The ‘Mass in Time of War’ in C is the second of the six masses that Haydn composed between 1796 and 1802 at Eisenstadt, Vienna. The slow introduction to the Kyrie and the cello obbligato in the ‘Qui tollis’ are especially beautiful. Its name (given by Haydn) and the stirring kettledrum solo in the Agnus Dei are reminders of the European wars following the French Revolution and of Austria’s fear of invasion by Napoleon in 1796 as Haydn was writing the Mass.

The two works feature many examples of truly inspired use of the soloists as a quartet or as a trio, in pairs, and in solo lines that combine and contrast with the larger forces of the choir. Kumudini David, Eriko Perera, Peshali Yapa, Krishan Rodrigo and Laknath Seneviratne who are members of Camerata Musica will sing the demanding solo parts. The programme was prepared in cooperation with the Goethe-Institute.

The Camerata concert will be held at St. Paul’s Church, Kynsey Road on Saturday May 19 and begins at 7 p.m. Admission is by programme which may be purchased at the Lionel Wendt or at the Church door from 6 p.m.