Music / Mozart’s Requiem, Canberra Symphony Orchestra. At Llewellyn Hall, September 25. Reviewed by IAN McLEAN.

It was particularly gratifying to see a near-capacity audience gather to hear one of the masterpieces from the classic choral repertoire: Mozart’s Requiem.

It was also kind and fitting that the CSO management dedicated the performance to the memory of John Painter, who had passed away in recent days. John was a long-term CSO board director, fine cellist and music teacher, as well as a passionate believer in the healing power of music. He would have been so happy to know that so many people were present, perhaps utilising that healing power to maintain calm control during these times of anxiety and uncertainty.

This concert, the third in the 2025 CSO Llewellyn Series, was cleverly programmed to open with Mozart’s very first full-scale composition, written when he was 16, then close with his final work, the Requiem, written partly from his deathbed, but unfinished when he died at just 35. It was later completed by one of his students, Franz Xavier Sussmayr.

In contrast to the melancholy Requiem, the opening Divertimento in D major was bright and playful with the string orchestra sounding delightful as it scurried through the rapid phrases of the first movement then changed mood immediately for the elongated sections of the more elegant Andante second movement. Then back to strict, concise and tight rhythmic control for the joyful and exuberant third movement.

In her music writing Australian composer Corrina Bonshek is inspired by the sounds and patterns of nature aiming to “stir the soul while giving the listener space to be”. The string orchestra version of Dreams of the Earth I, originally performed with musicians spread in eight groups around a large circle through which the audience could wander, hauntingly captured the flight of birds and the songs of cicadas. This flowing and floating atmospheric music calls for a richness of sound and an ability to sustain and fill musical space with perfect intonation and clarity. The CSO strings certainly succeeded in achieving that aim.

The large CSO Chorus joined the orchestra for the Requiem as the orchestra itself grew to include an unusual instrumentation – Mozart did not include flutes, oboes, clarinets or horns but supplemented the strings with trombones, trumpets, bassoons and timpani, along with rarely heard basset horns, a lower voiced member of the clarinet family.

This was mammoth and monumental music, sorrowful and gloomy, in stark contrast to the light-hearted joyfulness of Mozart’s age 16 writing.

Conductor Erin Helyard directed his large forces with tight control, an obvious love of this work and a fine ability to produce controlled, disciplined playing with excellent dynamic control and contrast. The changes from thunderous to subtle and reflective were particularly noteworthy.

The Chorus sang with great confidence and surety and matched the orchestra with dynamic variation, neat phrasing and emotional involvement. In the louder, more powerful sections, the enthusiastic basses and sopranos outbalanced the tenors and altos and the sopranos became somewhat shrill when in full voice and in the upper vocal register. Those quibbles apart, the Tobias Cole and Robyn Holmes well drilled and trained chorus formed a fitting and attractive musical partnership with the orchestra.

Four of Australia’s finest operatic voices fronted the orchestra and chorus and Sara Macliver (soprano), Ashlyn Tymms (mezzo-soprano), Louis Hurley (tenor) and Christopher Richardson (bass-baritone) sang beautifully as fully anticipated.   Highlights were the quartet as a group singing Tuba Mirum which tells of the trumpet and its wondrous sound and the Domine Jesu Christe where the quartet join with the chorus to sing of Jesus Christ, the King of Glory, and His deliverance of the souls of the departed from the torments of Hell.

It is a rare pleasure to experience the power, majesty and brilliance of this Mozart masterpiece. The conductor and all performers provided a true avenue for John Painter’s belief in the healing power of music to be well and truly realised.