"Be Joyful" Bach Cantata 30 & Mozart "Haffner" Symphony

“Be Joyful” is the theme of a concert in the Catholic Pro-Cathedral on Sunday, June 12, at 2 pm, when the CBS Choir and Orchestra present two major works inspired by festival celebrations.
Bach’s Cantata 30 is suitably titled “Be Joyful” (Freue dich). It is a mature, large-scale work, with delectable solo arias framed by jubilant opening and closing choruses. He wrote it for performance in Leipzig on St John’s Day, a public holiday still observed in several countries on June 24 as a Feast Day, originally intended to supplant pagan rites celebrating the June solstice.

As in Bach’s time, the soloists will be drawn from the choir. They include Olivia Webb, Louisa Pilkington, Wally Enright, and Ken Joblin. Natalia M. Lomeiko leads the orchestra, with continuo played by Janet Cubey and Grant Bartley. The musical director is Don Whelan.

Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony No. 35 has been popular with audiences since its first performance in Vienna, when the applause was led by a delighted emperor. It takes its name from a Salzburg family which commissioned instrumental music to serenade the ascent to nobility of the son of a former mayor who had helped finance the Mozart’s early European tours. He had had already commissioned incidental music, now known as the Haffner Serenade, for a sister’s wedding. Those festivities inspire a country dance minuet and an elegant, melodious andante, but the symphony begins and ends with Mozart’s happiest and most energetic fast movements, which he instructed to be played “as fast as possible”.

The concert will end with peals of Alleluias in Mozart’s Regina Coeli, an exuberant work for choir and orchestra originally written for the festive season of Easter.

Another Christchurch Choral Festival is planned for August 21, at 3 pm.

In place of the usual Haydn symphony and Mass, the CBS choir, orchestra and soloists intend to perform his oratorio The Creation at 2 pm on Sunday 2 October, to mark the beginning of a new chapter for their cathedral music in Christchurch. They also hope to tour to Kaikoura, Blenheim and Nelson over Show Weekend, but all musical planning will continue to be conditional on the public health situation.

Handel’s Messiah will be performed at 1.30 pm on Sunday, 11 December.

CBS concludes their year with Weber’s “Jubilee” Mass in G Major at Christmas Midnight Mass.