
When in 1785 the Wiener Tonkünstlersozietät, a pension fund for the widows and orphans of professional musicians, asked Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for a choral work for their benefit concerts, the composer used a trick that was quite common at the time: he placed the Kyrie and Gloria of his unfinished mass in c -Moll with additionally composed arias and an underlaid Italian text for the cantata “Davide penitente” (The penitent David). It is possible that Mozart induced a reform of Emperor Joseph II, which prohibited church music at that time, to simply present his grandiose mass music torso in a new textual garb. At the world premiere in the Burgtheater in Vienna, Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 80 was also heard, with delicious effects, rhythmic sophistication and a truly eccentric finale that exemplifies the composer’s originality. As the leading Scottish original sound ensemble, John Butt and his Dunedin Consort stand for a slim and transparent sound full of structural details. They promise to lend the solemnity of these two seldom played masterpieces of the Viennese classic a new shine with high tension – a lasting experience!





