Sunday 1 November 2026, 7.30pm
St John`s Church Buxton
Bookends: Mozart and Britten
As we mark fifty years since the death of Britain’s greatest twentieth century composer, we perform one of Benjamin Britten’s earliest works and also one composed by Arvo Pärt after his death. In similar vein, the chorus will perform Mozart’s earliest known choral work and his incomplete Requiem which was the last work he composed.
Mozart’s Kyrie in F major, K. 33, is a sacred composition for choir and strings by a ten-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, dated June 12, 1766. It was written while the composer was in Paris with his family, and is the earliest known choral work by the young composer. The piece is about nine minutes long and is based upon a French song.
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten was written in 1977 by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, for string orchestra and bell. The cantus was composed in December 1976 as an elegy to mourn the death of Benjamin Britten whom Pärt greatly admired. It is perhaps Pärt’s most popular piece, and due to its evocative and cinematic feel, the piece has been used extensively as background accompaniment in both film and television documentaries.
Britten’s Simple Symphony, Op. 4, is a work for string orchestra or string quartet written between December 1933 and February 1934 in Lowestoft, using material that the composer had written as a child, between 1923 and 1926. The piece is based on eight themes which Britten wrote during his childhood (two per movement) and for which he had a particular fondness. He completed his final draft of this piece at age twenty.
Ave verum corpus (“Hail, True Body”), K. 618, is a motet in D major a setting of the Latin hymn of the same name composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart less than six months before Mozart’s death in 1791. It expresses Mozart’s deeply held beliefs about the Eucharist. Though only 46 bars long, it employs chromatic and tonal harmonic structures to reflect on religious themes of death, salvation and communion.
A great deal has been written about the composition of the Requiem in D minor, K. 626 by Mozart but much of it is apocryphal or reliant on dubious sources. What is known however, is that the work was commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg and was left uncompleted upon Mozart’s death on 5 December 1791. The work we will hear in this concert was completed by two of Mozart’s pupils, Joseph Eybler and then Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Much of the subsequent folklore was possibly generated by Mozart’s widow Constanze who was left in poor circumstances upon the death of her husband and sought to benefit by promoting the work in what we now term ‘tabloid’ fashion.
Kyrie K.33 – WA Mozart
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1976) – Arvo Pärt
Simple Symphony Op.4 – Benjamin Britten
Ave Verum Corpus K618 – WA Mozart
Requiem K626 – WA Mozart
Soloists to be announced
Chorus of Buxton Musical Society
Orchestra of Buxton Musical Society
Steven Wilkie – leader
Conducted by Sam Hayes