BBC Philharmonic | 7 May

Ben Gernon  – conductor
Georgie Malcolm – soprano
Clara Mouriz – mezzo soprano
Joshua Ellicott – tenor
Thomas Ashdown – baritone
Chetham’s Chamber Choir

Haydn Mass in B flat major, ‘Harmoniemesse’
Bach, orch. Webern Ricercar a 6 from ‘Musical Offering’
Mozart Symphony No. 41 in C major, K551 ‘Jupiter’

Tonight’s advertised conductor, Omer Meir Wellber, has had to pull out due to illness. We are grateful to Ben Gernon for taking his place.

Ben Gernon directs a suitably expansive team of musicians and singers in a roof-raising performance tonight.

We open with Harmoniemesse, Haydn’s last important work which he wrote and completed in the year he turned 70. Yet this is no valediction, no quiet farewell – it’s a work of magnificent ambition and grandeur, ending not with a solemn wave goodbye but an infectious sense of positivity and joy.

There’s also more than a touch of the epic about Mozart’s last Symphony, ‘Jupiter,’ which concludes tonight’s performance. Completed in 1788, three years before his death, the young composer was unaware how significant his posthumous influence would be, especially on the likes of Haydn.

In between, we’ll enjoy Webern’s exquisitely jewelled take on the six-part Ricercar from Bach’s Musical Offering.