By Randi Bjornstad

Maestro Diane Retallack always speaks enthusiastically about coming concerts, but her delight in presenting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s unfinished Grand Mass in C Minor seems to have her especially excited.

“It’s one of the greatest choral works ever, in my opinion, and it’s one that he didn’t even complete,” Retallack said over tea a few days ago. “It has a connection with his wife Constanze — in fact, she sang a solo when finished parts of the mass were first performed.”

It’s a bit of a strange story, but then Mozart was nothing if not a bit of a strange — albeit brilliant — composer.

He was born in January 1756 and died in December 1791, a few weeks shy of his 36th birthday. He wrote the bulk of the C Minor mass in 1782 and ’83 in Vienna, during the time that he and Costanze met, became affianced and married. The story goes that he promised his father, still in Salzburg, that when he brought Costanze to meet him and Mozart’s sister Nannerl, he would also bring a mass to be performed in a Roman Catholic Church there.

Anton Belov, baritone

Although the composition wasn’t completed by then, Mozart took it along anyway, and the finished pieces — the Kyrie, Gloria and Sanctus — were performed in Salzburg.

“Over time after that, Mozart did some more little bits on it, but he never finished the whole thing before he died,” Retallack said. “It may have been because by then there wasn’t much call any longer for a Catholic mass.”

Nonetheless, “It is such an amazing piece of work — it’s almost as if he had conceived of the different movements at different times, because some of it has five (choral) parts, and sometimes there are eight,” she said. “It’s also unusual in that it was written for two sopranos, a tenor and a bass-baritone.”

Anya Matanovič, soprano

Beyond that, the solos are “very demanding,” Retallack said. “The sopranos have to be incredibly well-matched, and the bass goes to the very bottom of that range and then pops up to the high end of the baritone.”

That meant engaging “stellar soloists,” she continued. Those performers will be soprano Anya Matanovič, mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann, tenor Matthew Plenk, baritone Anton Belov. Retallack will hold a public meet-and-greet with the soloists the day before the performance, at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24, in the Jacobs Community Room on the lower level of the Hult Center for the Performing Arts.

Krysty Swann, mezzo-soprano

At the rate he had been going, if the C Minor mass ever had been completed, it would have been incredibly long, Retallack said, “probably in the realm of the (J.S.) Bach B Minor,” which can take upwards of two hours to perform.

As it is, the Mozart C Minor takes about an hour, so the second half of the Eugene Concert Choir’s program features the soloists, backed up by the Eugene Concert Choir and Eugene Concert Orchestra, performing some of the most recognizable and lively opera arias ever.

All four soloists will sing the “Quartet” from Giuseppe Verdi’s tragedy, “Rigoletto.”

Mathew Plenk, tenor

In addition, Belov will portray the self-confident “Toreador” from Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” with Swann as Carmen, singing the voluptuous “Habanera” aria.

Belov also will sing — in his native Russian — the “Ya vas lyublu” aria which translates as “I love you,” from “Queen of Spades” by Peter Tchaikovsky.

Plenk will take on the tenor high notes in “La donna e mobile” from Giuseppe Verdi’s tragedy, “Rigoletto,” and in the program finale, he and Matanovič will join forces with the choir and orchestra to sing “Libiamo,” the drinking song from Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

 

Eugene Concert Choir and Orchestra

When: 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 25; pre-concert “Meet the Soloists” event  at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24, in the Jacobs Community Room on the lower level of the Hult Center

Where: Silva Concert Hall, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (Seventh and Willamette streets in downtown Eugene)

Tickets: $25 to $52, available in advance from the Hult Center box office, 541-682-5000, or online at hultcenter.org (online purchases include an additional service fee)

Information: eugeneconcertchoir.org