MOZART UPDATED: The Princeton Symphony Orchestra and the Westminster Symphonic Choir join forces to perform Gregory Spears’ 21st century completion of Mozart’s “Requiem.”

Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) Music Director Rossen Milanov leads the orchestra in performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in a 21st century completion by Gregory Spears on Saturday, November 11 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, November 12 at 4 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium. The Sunday performance will be preceded by a 3 p.m. pre-concert talk featuring Milanov and composer Spears.

Performing Mozart’s masterpiece with the PSO are the Westminster Symphonic Choir and four soloists: Abigail Rethwisch, soprano; Chelsea Laggan, mezzo-soprano; Carlos Enrique Santelli, tenor; and Eric McKeever, baritone. Leading off the program is Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, a modern-day take on minuet and trio classical form, which was premiered at Princeton University in 2011.

Composers have long looked to earlier works for inspiration. Mozart himself borrowed from Handel’s “Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline” at the start of his Requiem. According to Milanov, today’s composers also draw upon the past. “Caroline’s piece was sparked by the Brentano String Quartet’s performance of a minuet by Haydn, and Gregory Spears is among the latest to complete Mozart’s stirring work, drawing upon traditional liturgical music and passages from an earlier completion of the Requiem by (Franz) Süssmayr,” he said. “Yet Gregory deftly balances these influences with his own compositional style, making his mark with a fresh Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei for today’s audiences.”

Recognized as one of the world’s leading symphonic choral ensembles, the Westminster Symphonic Choir, conducted by James Jordan and Associate Conductor Tyler Weakland, has recorded and performed with major orchestras under virtually every internationally acclaimed conductor of the past 90 years. Recent seasons have included a performance of Holst’s The Planets with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Cristian Macelaru; the
premiere of Machover’s Philadelphia Voices with The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado; Handel’s Messiah with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Andrew Manze; and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Milanov.

Spears is a New York-based composer who has been commissioned by The New York Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and The Crossing, among many others. His Requiem was released by New Amsterdam records in 2011. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Aaron Copland House, and was a participant and later a composer mentor for The American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice program. He holds degrees in composition from Eastman School of Music (BM), Yale School of Music (MM), and Princeton (Ph.D.). He also studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen with Hans Abrahamsen. He currently teaches composition and orchestration at Purchase College Conservatory (SUNY).

Visit princetonsymphony.org or call (609) 497-0020 for ticket information.