Thompson, Adams, Frank & Mozartx3: Jan 23–25, 2026 complete concert guide
- cbeeson69
- 3 days ago
- 13 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
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J.C.W.T. Mozart
"Coronation" Mass in C Major
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Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (1756-1791), AKA Amadeus, AKA Wolfie, was an Austrian composer born January 27, 1756 and died in 1791. He was just 35 years old when he died, but he got a pretty strong head start having a famous composer violinist for a father who also managed to open doors for him and get him situated as a child prodigy. He was writing some of his first symphonies by the age of 10, and became one of the most prolific and influential composers of the Classical era, writing more than 800 works for all types of ensembles.
Highlights:
Mozart did not name his C major Mass “Coronation”. Instead it seems to be a nickname attached in the early 1800s after becoming the top hit requested for royal coronations and special events in the Imperial court of Vienna.
He began composing the Mass in 1782 following his marriage to Constanze and as a way to smooth over his father’s ire at having married without first introducing her and gaining his blessing.
Mozart composed the solo soprano part with Constanze in mind, who sang it at the 1783 premiere. Curiously this was a premiere only of the portions he had managed to finish: the Kyrie, Gloria, and a portion of the Credo movements. The rest was supplemented by other sacred works. He never ended up completing the Mass, leaving drafts and fragments for scholars to discover later.
The construction of the missing portions of the Mass only occurred in the early 1900s. In order to fill out the remaining portions, scholars have used notated vocal and instrumental lines as well as sketches and fragments of the incomplete Credo, the Sanctus, and Benedictus. No extant sketches or fragments of an Agnus Dei have been found, so this portion has been constructed completely from educated guesses.
The “Coronation” Mass in C major is scored for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass vocal soloists, chorus, and a relatively small orchestra WHICH INEXPLICABLY DOES NOT INCLUDE VIOLAS. 🚫🎻👎🏽 Apparently he needed to give them some time off to repay all their attentive work and adherence to the very highest possible artistic standards. 😎 Or maybe he finally got tired of writing in alto clef. Those are the most scholarly and definitely super probable options. 🤓
Resources:
🎉FUN FACT ALERT! 🎉
Mozart’s mentor and fellow composer Franz Josef “Papa” Haydn was so taken by the Coronation Mass that bits of it crept into his 98th Symphony and his “Harmoniemesse”.
An excerpt of the Kyrie was used in the film Amadeus to illustrate Salieri observing “the voice of God”.
Joel Thompson
To Awaken The Sleeper
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Joel Thompson (1988- ) is an award winning American composer best known for his 2015 choral work Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. He is currently the first Composer-in-Residence for Houston Grand Opera and has been commissioned by many major institutions including the New York Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, and as in the case of To Awaken the Sleeper, Colorado Music Festival.
About the music:
Joel Thompson composed To Awaken the Sleeper in 2021. It is a 20 minute work for narrator and large orchestra structured similarly to Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait and uses texts of James Baldwin.
From composer Joel Thompson:
"The insightful and prophetic words of James Baldwin have always been a source of solace for me, and never more so than during the last few years as the country has been forced to grapple with its identity. When commissioned to write a piece for Peter Oundjian and the Colorado Music Festival in 2020, it felt like the perfect opportunity to amplify his words. James Baldwin sought to bear witness to the country that birthed him and hated him, a country that murdered his friends (Evers, King, X) for speaking out against injustice. Despite the pain of those wounds, it is evident that, although Baldwin didn't hesitate to hold our deeply flawed society to account, his words were rooted in an impossible love of this country. Though they were written decades ago, his words still ring true. Today, Baldwin asks us to look in the mirror and reckon with what we see. He asks us to examine the nature of power and its dependence on human will and desire. He asks us to go to "the unprotected" among us in order to examine our supposed love for justice. I like to think that if he were to reword his proposal today, he would include the immigrant, the refugee, the trans person, those without bodily autonomy under the law, and those suffering in the thrall of poverty. Baldwin acknowledges all the messiness and failure and genocide and death that has brought us to this point and he asks us to build a new world where we truly value and support each other in all of our differences. It is in that spirit that the piece was born and I hope that same spirit can continue to move each of us toward a more perfect union."
Excerpt of a review by Pierre Ruhe of ArtsATL:
"At the start, the music explodes in kaleidoscopic cacophony. A listener’s ear jumps all around the stage manically, grasping for a phrase or a hook to hang on to. Soon what might be an Ivesian marching-band tune appears and fades somewhere in a thicket. It gets loud. It dissolves into sweeping blocks of sound. The orchestral colors are often dazzling. As narrator, Thompson — appearing poised and relaxed in a crisp brown suit — enters with the words “So be it! We cannot awaken the sleeper, and God knows we have tried . . .”
Baldwin’s stylish prose, every line of it, could be reprinted to describe the key moments in Thompson’s work. The composer doesn’t brush past any of it, instead having the orchestra offer a running commentary on the text. In devastating moments, he knows to thin out the orchestral scoring and let the words do the talking: “Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any Black man, any poor person — ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it.”
Moments later, he evokes the fife and drum to surround Revolutionary War language: “When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt.”
When “principles on which a new world will be built” take us toward resolution, Thompson puts a halo of strings around it, perhaps borrowing from earthy English string serenades. Yet there’s nothing cliched in his writing, no received musical wisdom. Thompson has his own story to tell.
Thompson’s music is alive and inquisitive, in constant dialogue with itself and the text. He pays close attention to compositional craft, without wasted effort. There’s still a trace of the student in his writing — an overuse of cymbals rolled by soft mallets, like a slow-motion metallic splash, for example — but so much originality and lucid energy and stylistic confidence. He’s an important voice to follow."
Narrating this performance will be spoken-word poet Frankie Le’Troy. You can watch a previous collaboration with Mr. Le'Troy below.
Resources:
(Rock me) Amadeus
"Gran Partita" Wind Serenade
About the Music:
Mozart composed many serenades, pieces of music ordinarily expected to be light background entertainment for parties like a home stereo system made of human instrumentalists. Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major bucks this trend by drawing attention to the work rather than letting it fade into the bushes like Homer Simpson.
This serenade is specifically scored for Harmonie plus string bass. A Harmonie is a small group of wind and brass instrumentalists ordinarily employed by a wealthy aristocrat during the 18th century Classical era. Harmonien were commonly used for larger functions or outdoor parties since the sound of the wind band was typically louder and could therefore better carry to people’s ears. In this particular case, Mozart decided to use 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 basset horns (an early version of the clarinet with a richer mellower sound), 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, and string bass for extra coolness. No viola though. That would’ve put it right over the edge.
Gran Partita, nicknamed later after Mozart had died, was composed 1781-1784. Four of the movements were premiered in March of 1784 by a cobbled together group of servant musicians from the “Harmonien” of various different Austrian households who were choosing to use their vacation time during Lent to take on an extra gig. #️⃣musicianlife #️⃣alwaysgrinding #️⃣stackthatcake
No joke, this is a MAJOR work for wind ensemble. There are seven movements, and a typical performance lasts 50 minutes!
Largo-Molto Allergo - Slow-Very lively
Menuetto - Minuet (a waltz-time dance)
Adagio - Slow (This one features the oboe, clarinet, and bassett horn.)
Menuetto - Minuet
Romance - Romance
Tema con Variazioni - Theme with Variations (In this case, there are 6 and the final one is a quick waltz-time dance.)
Finale - Ending (This one is in Rondo form, commonly used in the Classical era, which features a frequently recurring theme throughout. It’s prototypical Mozart at his most playful and joyous.)
Resources:
🤓Nerd Alert!🤓
The Adagio movement features prominently in this scene from the film Amadeus.
John Adams
Frenzy: a Short Symphony
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“I find starting a new piece is just always unbelievably frustrating because I think I know what I want to do but then Day 1 comes and I have that horrible sinking feeling that it’s all over and that everything from here on is just gonna be crap. The first hand scratches you put down are always clumsy and I try to console myself and think that what I’m looking for is the DNA. What is this piece about? What’s its genetic makeup? The creative process is so absolutely buried in obscurity and usually it takes me months before I have that first good day and say ‘okay this is bar 1’. It sucks but I’m gonna live with it anyway.”
That quote is from a Toronto Symphony interview with John Adams (1947- ) a multiple Grammy winner, Pulitzer Prize recipient, and one of the world's most performed living composers. The struggle is real!
About the Music:
John Adams composed Frenzy in 2023. It is his most substantial full orchestra work since City Noir in 2009 and is filled with the kind of pulsating energy and languid melodies as his insanely cool 1985 symphonic work Harmonielehre.
Frenzy is still very fresh and has had only a handful of performances since its 2024 world premiere. Colorado Symphony will give its New York premiere Feb 1 at Carnegie Hall and will be the 7th orchestra in the world to perform it.
John Adams, about Frenzy:
"Frenzy is a one-movement symphony that in the course of its 20 minutes encompasses a variegated yet unified symphonic structure. Its title notwithstanding, the piece is generally buoyant and extrovert and postpones its real frenetic energy to the concluding moments. What makes Frenzy unique in comparison to my other works is its focus, almost to the point of obsession, on the development and transformation of small, vivid motives that continue to resurface in various guises throughout the piece. This kind of classic development treatment of motivic ideas differs from the gradual “change-via-repetition” technique in my earlier, minimalist-influenced works. In fact, once completed, Frenzy revealed itself, much to the surprise of its composer, as a melding of the two approaches toward musical form. On the one hand, its rhythmic event horizon is still essentially pulse-driven, while on the other, its melodic world is about shape-shifting and the “spinning out” of ideas.
The opening bars present two contrasting gestures: a punctuated tattoo in the winds and brass and an urgent, muscular theme in the upper strings. Both these ideas reappear throughout the piece, always transformed in one way or another and yet always identifiable.
In place of a “slow movement” the music’s surface simply quiets down; density and forcefulness yield to a feeling of lightness and transparency. The pulse is still there, now carried along by a congenial interplay among the two harps and celesta while the strings limn a lyrical melody that floats above them.
The final section is indeed frenetic, with hard-driven, choppy string figures, tsunami-like waves of brass and madly scurrying woodwinds, all of which come together to earn the piece’s title."
Wolfie
"Haffner" Symphony No. 35
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Continuing with the apparent theme of ‘music by Mozart all composed around the same time and that got nicknamed by someone else and either wasn’t entirely completed or possibly started out as a different type of piece than it ended’, we have Symphony No. 35, the “Haffner”!
About the Music:
Symphony No. 35 in D major was commissioned by the Haffner family of Salzburg, hence the nickname.
Mozart composed it in 1782. The first sketches were meant to be a serenade for one of the Haffner’s ennoblement ceremonies. This was actually at the request of Leopold, Mozart’s famous father. Mozart was also composing his Mass in C major and reworking his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio during this time and was really feeling the heat about an upcoming move to Vienna and getting some grief from Leopold about choosing to marry Constanze. He essentially crammed it in, sending it to Leopold in chunks as he completed them. This music was not finished in time for the ennoblement ceremony but it had a test run performance in 1782 before Mozart reworked it into what is now the symphony for a premiere performance in 1783.
The “Haffner” Symphony is in four movements: Allegro con Spirito (lively with spirit), Andante (walking pace), Menuetto (a waltz-time dance), and Presto (very quick pace).
A typical performance lasts about 20 minutes.
Resources:
🎉FUN FACT ALERT! 🎉
The premiere of the Haffner Symphony happened on March 23, 1783 - exactly one year prior to the premiere of his most famous Serenade, the Gran Partita.
The concert was an epic “And now, MOZART!” show. It kicked off with the first three movements of the symphony, then an aria from his opera Idomeneo, followed by Piano Concert No. 13, then another aria, then the concertante movements from Finalmusik K. 320, then ANOTHER piano concerto with a reworked final movement (K. 175), and ANOTHER aria, AND THEN HE IMPROVISED A FUGUE FOR THE EMPEROR, followed by two sets of variations on themes by other composers, and then FINALLY
he finished the concert with the last movement of the Haffner Symphony.
That is a LOT of interstitial material for a symphony premiere! 🤓🎉
Gabriela Lena Frank
Conquest Requiem
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"I think the music can be seen as a by-product of my always trying to figure out how Latina I am and how gringa I am.”
Gabriela Lena Frank (1972- ) is an American composer, pianist, and mentor. She was born in Berkeley, CA. Her father is of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian and of Chinese descent. This multicultural heritage, and especially her mother’s Peruvian culture, figures strongly in all of Frank’s work. She frequently incorporates not only rhythms and harmonies associated with Latin American cultures but often includes folk instruments like the pan flute or charango alongside traditional Western European instruments of the orchestra.
In 2025 Frank was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named Composer of the Year for 2026 by Musical America.
Gabriela Lena Frank’s music has been commissioned and performed by major ensembles around the world including the symphonies of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland, the Kronos, Brentano, and Chiara string quartets, Silk Road Project, and most recently premiered her opera El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego at San Francisco Opera. It debuts at the Metropolitan Opera this spring.
About the Music:
Gabriela Lena Frank composed Conquest Requiem in 2017 for full orchestra, chorus, and soprano and baritone soloists. The Latin and Spanish libretto is from Nilo Cruz.
Gabriela Lena Frank wrote this about Conquest Requiem:
"Much has been written of the violent meeting of the Old and New Worlds that produced the Americas — North, Central, and South — known to the world today. Over the centuries since, key figures have emerged — conquistadores Cristoforo Colombo, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro; chroniclers Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the native Garcilaso de la Vega, and the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas — as especially emblematic of the cataclysm that was the Conquest. These men and countless others bore witness and, oftentimes, great responsibility for the death and destruction of entire societies while simultaneously having a hand in the birth of new mestizo (mixed-race) civilizations.
Against such grand historical strokes, the stories of ordinary people are easily swept away but for the efforts of creative imagination, employed here in the Conquest Requiem. This piece is inspired by the true story of Malinche, a Nahua woman from the Gulf Coast of Mexico who was given to the Spaniards as a young slave. Malinche’s ever-evolving prowess as an interpreter of her native Nahuatl, various Mayan dialects, and Spanish elevated her position such that she would convert to Christianity and become mistress to Cortés during his war against the Aztecs. She would later give birth to their son Martín, one of the first mestizos of the New World.
While Malinche has been conflated with Aztec legends, she has been variously viewed as feminist hero who saved countless lives, treacherous villain who facilitated genocide, conflicted victim of forces beyond her control, or as symbolic mother of the new mestizo people.
In the Conquest Requiem, Malinche’s story is the linchpin for the juxtaposition of traditional liturgical verses from the Latin Mass for the Dead against Nahua poetry as chronicled from the mouths of fallen indigenous princes. Newly composed Spanish words from playwright/poet Nilo Cruz round out the text."
Conquest Requiem is made up of seven movements which have Latin requiem as well as Nahua titles. For example the requiem begins with Introit - Cuicatl de Malinche. The introit in a requiem mass is a solemn chant and Cuicatl de Malinche translates to Song of Malinche, the primary character in this requiem.
The 7 movements are:
Introit - Cuicatl de Malinche (Chant - Song of Malinche)
Judex ergo cum sedebit (When the Judge takes his seat)
Dies Irae - Cuicatl de Martín (Day of Wrath - Song of Martín)
Recordare, Jesu pie (Remember, merciful Jesus)
Rex Tremendae - El aullido de Malinche (Tremendous King - The Howl of Malinche)
Confutatis maledictis (When the wicked are rebuked)
In Paradisum - Bendición de Malinche y Martín (Into Paradise - Blessing of Malinche and Martín)
Frank described the sound world of Conquest Requiem as “a freely tonal language that is colored by atonality, with readily perceivable rhythmic and melodic shapes. Orchestral colors are quite important to me as they paint a landscape of the New World.”
She continued, saying that she hopes that this music will help “in demystifying and de-demonizing harmful myths. Our country’s greatest strength has always been its diversity. I have long been drawn to mythology and folklore with its frequently close ties to spirituality; and freely confess that from time to time, I witness an event or visit a place or meet a person whose very incandescence gives me pause. It is perhaps from this place that I chose to honor those who have gone before us not simply in a piece entitled ‘Memorium’ but ‘Requiem.’”
A typical performance of Conquest Requiem lasts about 38 minutes.
Resources:
🤓Pure nerdery!🤓
Gabriela Lena Frank lives on a farm. She has chickens and likes to hold them. Occasionally she lets someone else hold a chicken too. 😎
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