Mozart: Master Among Masters

DOUGLAS WOLTERS performs in metropolitan Washington on modern and baroque cello as well as on viola da gamba. The Washington Post recently praised Mr. Wolters as "one of the finest continuo cellists in the area." In addition to serving as principal cellist of The Bach Sinfonia and the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra, Mr. Wolters collaborates in mixed media events with poets, dancers, and other artists.

Mr. Wolters has appeared in recitals at Alice Tully Hall in New York, and in Washington, D.C. at the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution with the Smithsonian Chamber Players. Mr. Wolters has recorded for Orion and Northeastern. A graduate of New England Conservatory, Mr. Wolters studied cello with Mihaly Virizlay and viola da gamba with Gian Lyman Silbiger. When not performing, he teaches stringed instruments in the Fairfax County school system and maintains a private studio.

BARBARA PETERSON CACKLER was born and raised in Kansas, where she began studying the piano at the age of four. She received her Bachelor of Music degree for Oberlin Conservatory of Music and her Master of Music degree from Yale School of Music. Ms. Cackler has done extensive private teaching, accompanying, and performing of chamber music, and has served as music director and organist for several churches. She has given solo recitals throughout the United States and the Indian Sub-Continent. Ms. Cackler was a featured guest artist on WGMS Radio's "Spotlight" program. She has also performed with the Delhi Symphony as a piano soloist. her teachers have included Miles Mauney, Olga Barabini, Donald Currier, Claud Frank, and Béla Böszörmenyi-Nagy.

Louise Lee is a graduate of Smith College and Indiana University, where she received a Master of Music degree in organ performance, studying with Oswald Ragatz. Ms. Lee performs frequently as a piano accompanist. She is organist at Arlington Forest United Methodist Church. Ms. Lee has directed the Ad Hoc Singers since she founded the group in 1975.

The Ad Hoc Singers, an amateur chamber chorus devoted to traditional choral literature from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, has been in existence under the direction of Louise Lee since 1975. They perform regularly at churches and other locations throughout the area. Good sight readers interested in joining the group should call 703-538-2557 to set up an audition, or speak with Ms. Lee after the concert.

We'd like to thank St. Peter's Episcopal Church for the use of their sanctuary and facilities for this concert.

Thank you to Emilia Guevara and Karen Lee for their work on the program and the flyers.

Our concert was recorded by Jerry Nedilsky, JNL Recording, 7408 Silent Willow Court, Manassas, VA, 20112, 703-791-0737, jnlrecording@yahoo.com.

Among the composers' names is one which may be unfamilar.

Johannes Schneck is said to have been the greatest viola virtuoso in northern Europe in his time. He was born in Amsterdam. He was playing viola da gamba at the electoral court in Düsseldorf, Germany around 1690 and later returned to Amsterdam, where his instrument was especially popular. Schenck composed suites and sonatas for viol alone and in combination with other instruments, as well as some vocal music, including an opera. Opus 9, Echoes of the Danube, is Schenck's most important work.

From 1774 to mid-1777, Mozart was employed in Salzburg, Austria, where he was born. He served as Konzertmeister and then as organist for the Prinz-Archbishop's court chapel. Here he also wrote music to be performed at Salzberg Cathedral.

The archbishop preferred that the celebration of Mass last no longer than three quarters of an hour, so Mozart's contributions were necessarily limited. Some have dismissed Mozart's sacred music from this period as relatively unimportant. But the musicologist Paul Henry Long said "Mozart's little Masses represent the highest in churchly chamber music."

The Mass in B♭ seems to have been composed in 1777 before the composer and his mother left Salzburg in September to travel to various German cities and to Paris. He was hoping to find a position and milieu more stimulating and appreciative of his gifts. This mass is thought to have been written as a sort of prayer-offering for a good outcome to the journey. It was performed in December of that year at St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg according to a letter from Leopold Mozart to his son.

Another musicologist and biographer of Mozart, Alfred Einstein pronounced this B♭ Mass "so intimate, the orchestral apparatus so modest, so lyric, that it has an almost private character, in which the distinction between sacred and secular vanishes." He and many others have also commented on this Mass's bold chromaticism, a feature found most often in Mozart's later works, of which the Rondo in A minor (Vienna, 1787) is a beautiful example.

Louise Lee