Masterworks Includes Mozart Vespers

The Choral Masterworks Concert, featuring selections by Georg Philipp Telemann, Thomas Linley Jr. and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is Sunday, March 26, at 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 305 East Anapamu Street. Admission is $10, students are free. For more information, please contact the music department at (805) 565-6040.

Teleman (1681-1767) was perhaps the best known composer of his time in Germany and highly respected by Johann Sebastian Bach. “His setting of Psalm 117 was written in 1758 while the composer was serving in Hamburg as Kantor of the Johanneum Lateinschule, and music director of the city's five largest churches,” says Michael Shasberger, conductor and Adams professor of music and worship.

Mozart (1756-1791), one the most performed classical music composers to this day, wrote “The Solemn Vespers for the Feast of a Confessor” as a liturgical work for the Salzburg Cathedral in 1780.

“This setting of the vespers texts of five Psalms and “The Magnificat” were Mozart’s last works composed for the cathedral,” Shasberger says. “In it one can hear the foreshadowing of “The Requiem,” the amazing virtuosity of Mozart’s compositional technique in the fugal writing of the “Laudate Pueri,” his most beautiful lyric writing in “The Laudate Dominum,” and the brilliance of this orchestral and vocal writing throughout.”

The Mozart vespers features soloists Emmalee Wetzel ’15 (soprano), Rachel La Commare ’16 (alto), Bryan Lane ’10 (tenor) and Luke Mizuki ’15 (bass) with student conductor Jason Tong ’17. Guest and alumni singers include sopranos Emily Brothers, Bethany Day, Phoebe Mullen and Melanie Rogers; alto Kim Bennett, tenors Scott Myrvold and John Rodkey; bases Maurice Lee, Jonathan Mitchell, John Piot, Erik Rodkey, Ray Rosentrator and Ron See.

Linley (1756-1778), known as the English Mozart, was a child prodigy and had written numerous orchestral works and two significant oratorios before he drowned in a boating accident at 22.

“A further tragedy occurred in 1809 when a fire destroyed the London library that housed most of his manuscripts,” Shasberger says. “A contemporary copy of “Let God Arise” was the basis for the 1977 reconstruction of performing parts published by A-R Editions in Madison, Wis., and our performance may represent the first of this work in the U.S.”

The program features solos from current students, including Serena Lee ’17, co-president of the college choir, Katie Ogata ’18, Robert Huff ’17 and Daniel Prykhitko ’18.