After twenty-six storied years with the San Francisco City Chorus, Larry Marietta will take his final bows as Artistic Director at our Spring 2024 Concert. The 80-voice SF City Chorus will perform the Mozart Requiem, with John R.S. Walko on the renowned Calvary organ, and the San Francisco Academy Orchestra.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), one of the most celebrated composers in musical history, created over 600 glorious pieces of music in almost every genre — an astonishing achievement in such a tragically short life. His final composition was the Requiem in D minor, feverishly penned as he became mortally ill. It is a piece of deep emotion and pathos, yet full of resplendent and uplifting musical themes; Mozart moves us confidently from the depths of despair to the promise of hope and salvation. Did he feel in those final months, as has been suggested by some, that he was writing his own requiem? We do know that the sublime beauty of this Requiem, one of the greatest choral pieces ever written, has captivated audiences for centuries: it is no wonder that Mozart’s Requiem was performed at the funerals of Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, and even Napoleon.
Also on the program: two 20th century anthems by British composers – Serenade to Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, set to the words of William Shakespeare, and I Was Glad by Hubert Parry, played at coronation ceremonies of the English monarchy since 1902 – plus George Frideric Handel’s joyful Organ Concerto No. 13, “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.”