VCU Symphony brings Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ to sold-out concert hall

Nick Bonadies
Spectrum Editor

Near the top of any must-hear list of Western classical music sits Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, K. 626, which the composer was still struggling to complete when he died in 1791 at only 35.

At their fall concert this past Tuesday, enough people turned out to hear the VCU Symphony’s ambitious undertaking of the work that, according to the VCU Music box office, more than people had to be turned away.

The Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall at the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, where the concert took place, can hold  people.

“It didn’t hit me until afterwards,” said Sarah Agrios, a freshman violin performance major and violinist with the VCU Symphony. “There were over   people. … This is something I’ve dreamed of doing for however long, playing a major piece for so many people.”

“While I was playing, all that was running through my head was, ‘This is why you’re doing this,’” she said. “‘This is why music is your thing.’”

The packed audience – with several listeners sufficing for additional chairs placed in the aisles – sat engrossed in a performance every bit as transcendental as the work itself. The VCU Symphony, joined by VCU choral groups the Commonwealth Singers and Choral Arts Society, delivered one of Mozart’s final works with every phrase played rendingly, each line of Ecclesiastical Latin sung with otherworldly grief and conviction.

The Requiem was the capstone of Tuesday’s all-Mozart program, which featured in its first half the overture to “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and the famous Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, with clarinet professor Dr. Charles West as soloist. (The clarinet concerto was Mozart’s last purely instrumental work; he died the December after its completion.)

According to Daniel Myssyk, VCU Music’s director of orchestral studies and music director for the VCU Symphony, taking on the Requiem was a major undertaking for all three groups: Calling the Requiem a “warhorse” of the symphonic repertoire, he described the performance by VCU’s musicians as a “major uplifting moment.”

“A major collaborative effort like (the Requiem) acts like a catalyst for all the energy in our department,” he said. Rebecca Tyree, VCU choral music education professor, led the vocal ensembles in preparing the complex contrapuntal score leading up to the performance; the symphony and chorus had only a few rehearsals together under Myssyk’s direction.

Myssyk said that a larger-than-usual portion of the symphony for Tuesday’s performance was made up of freshmen musicians, with many senior personnel having graduated last semester.

Agrios, for whom the Requiem was only her second concert with the VCU Symphony, said that “It’s kind of all riding on our (freshmen musicians’) shoulders” during rehearsals.

Garrett Pederson, sophomore viola performance major and violist with VCU Symphony, said that while there is “difficulty at times” with so many newer players, Tuesday’s performance was “the most fulfilling experience I’ve had in my entire existence as a musician … just because of how difficult it was to put together, and how well it came together, ultimately.”

“This piece is widely regarded as one of the best things Mozart ever put out, and Mozart is widely regarded as one of the best composers the world ever put out,” Pederson said. “It was … just a fantastic piece for all the people that were involved with it.”

Myssyk said that bringing the experience of classical music to a broader public – as did the student musicians with the Requiem to their -plus person audience Tuesday – is an essential goal of pursuing music as a career.

“(Classical musicians) live in a world where … we think everybody loves Mozart already – we take that for granted,” he said. “But we cannot go thinking that people already know and love this music. We have to bring it to them … this true beauty that we want to share with them.”

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Photo by Chris Conway