You Only Turn 250 Once

You Only Turn 250 Once. Sunday, April 23 at 8:00 p.m. Memorial Church. Tickets at the Harvard Box Office. $10; $5 students and seniors.



How else could Mozart celebrate his 250th birthday year but by having his music performed by practically every classical music group in the world? There have been entire concert seasons dedicated to him and tons of his lesser-known works have surfaced. Birthday cakes have even been frosted lovingly with his portrait. What’s more, he only hit the big day in January, which means—fortunately for audiences everywhere—that there’s still plenty to come.

The festivities continue with the Harvard University Choir’s performance of Mozart’s “Requiem,” his final and unfinished work. The piece captures the composer at the height of his creative trajectory, and encompasses desperate, fiery emotions not evident in many of his other compositions.

Even before the 1984 release of the blockbuster film “Amadeus,” for which the “Requiem” serves as a musical centerpiece, the unfamiliar stylistic elements in the piece sparked the interest of musicologists. The choir will perform a completed iteration of the work by one such scholar, Harvard’s own Robinson Jr. Professor of Humanities Robert D. Levin ’68. The solos will be sung by soprano Teresa Wakim, mezzo-soprano Krista River, tenor Aaron Sheehan, and baritone Nikolas Sean-Paul Nackley, all professional vocalists of the New England area.

The Harvard University Choir, founded in 1834, has a close affiliation with the Memorial Church. Led by Gund University Organist and Choirmaster Edward E. Jones, the choir sings in the weekly services at the Memorial Church every Sunday of the academic year. They also perform on several other occasions—during the biggest snowstorm this past February, they sang a wonderful rendition of Mozart’s lesser-known opera “Idomeneo.”

If the prospect of an extraordinary performance of a fantastic piece does not excite you quite enough, don’t take my word for it; in his Easter Sunday greetings, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church Peter J. Gomes took several minutes to recommend the performance to hundreds of churchgoers. If it’s worthy of a Sunday announcement, it’s certainly worthy of attendance.

—Staff writer Jennifer D. Chang can be reached at jdchang@fas.harvard.edu.