Bard Festival Chorale and the American Symphony Orchestra, dir. Leon Botstein

The American Symphony Orchestra illuminates sacred scores of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and contemporaries in this program featuring vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, presented at the historic Riverside Church. Enjoy Mozart’s beloved Coronation Mass in C Major, K. 317, alongside selections by several contemporaries who influenced the famous composer: Johann Adolf Hasse’s Miserere in C minor seamlessly blends operatic lyricism with sacred solemnity in an expressive, rarely performed score. Georg Anton Benda brought distinctive dramatic flair to sacred music in his cantata Gott steigt herab, while Michael Haydn’s compact Missa Sancti Joannis Nepomuceni exemplifies the grace, clarity, and simplicity that characterized liturgical music in eighteenth-century Salzburg. Concluding with the Coronation Mass, the celebrated score crowns the evening’s program of seldom heard–and until now, forgotten–masterpieces.