Dan Redfeld conducts Mozart’s Requiem in D minor

Daniel RedfeldUncategorized

Westwood Presbyterian Church’s Music at Westwood, third concert this season will be Wolfgang Mozart’s final composition, the Requiem in D minor, presented on April 7, 2019 at 5 pm.

Commissioned in July of 1791 and written through the fall of the same year, Mozart died on December 5th at the age of 35 leaving the work unfinished.

The Requiem was completed by Mozart’s colleague and infrequent copyist, Franz Süssmayr, in 1792. The overall consensus by music scholars is that his completion reveals a composer of limited means. Hence music director Dan Redfeld has chosen to present the Richard Maunder reconstruction of Mozart’s final masterpiece.

Completed in the early 1980’s, music historian Richard Maunder used Mozart’s incomplete autograph, including an Amen fragment found on the same page as the sketch for the Rex Tremendae movement and clearly intended as the conclusion to the Lacrimosa movement. This version also jettisons Süssmayr’s contributions and constructs a revised version of the Agnus Dei  based on an extensive Mozart outline. Finally the orchestration has been revised using Die Zauberflöte and La clemenza di Tito as models to create a more authentic Mozartian sound. The Maunder edition was made famous by Christopher Hogwood’s 1984 recording on the Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre label and is rarely performed in the United States.

Dan Redfeld will lead the WPC Chancel Choir and WPC Chamber Symphony along with soloists Christina Borgioli (soprano), Nandani Maria Sinha (alto), Orson Van Gay (tenor) and Matthew Lewis (bass).