Chancellor’s Concert April 30 to highlight 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth

The Washington University Chamber Choir and the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will present the 2006 Chancellor’s Concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 30, in Graham Chapel.

The concert will honor of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) with a performance of the composer’s popular Vesperae solennes de confessore, K. 339, for chorus and orchestra. Also on the program are the Russian Easter Festival Overture by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908); and Symphony No. 2 (“Romantic”) by Howard Hanson (1896-1981).

The Chancellor’s Concert is free and open to the public. Graham Chapel is located immediately north of the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, call (314) 935-4841 or staylor@wustl.edu.

Dan Presgrave, instrumental music coordinator in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, conducts the 70-plus-member Symphony Orchestra. John Stewart, director of vocal activities, conducts the 60-plus-member Chamber Choir.

In recognition of the Russian Orthodox Church’s observance of Easter, on April 23, the program will open with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture. Written in 1887-88, the piece depicts the spectacle of this importance Orthodox celebration while using liturgical chants from the obikhod, a collection holding those chants of great importance to the faith. The finale of the work is based on the canticle “Christ is risen!”

The program will continue with Mozart Vesperae solennes de confessore, composed in 1779 for liturgical use — a saint’s day — in one of the main churches of Salzburg, the composer’s hometown. Unlike the texts for the Mass, those for the Vespers are based on psalms and Mozart set his music to Psalms 110 (“Dixit Dominus”), 111 (“Confitebor tibi Domine”), 112 (“Beatus vir”), 113 (“Laudate pueri Dominum”) and 117 (“Laudate Dominum”), as well as on the New Testament canticle “Magnificat.”

The program will conclude with Hanson’s Second Symphony, which the composer wrote in 1930 and subtitled “Romantic” for its lush harmonies and large orchestral forces, which recall the symphonic repertoire of the late 19th century. As director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, for 40 years, Hanson exerted considerable influence on American composers and the direction of American music in the middle of the 20th century. Symphony No. 2 has remained his most popular composition.