PORT ANGELES — It sounds lightweight — “An Afternoon with Mozart.”
Might this be a Sunday walk in the park, something the Peninsula Singers and conductor Dewey Ehling are doing on a whim?
Quite a whim: The Grand Mass in C minor, which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote 229 years ago in Vienna, will fill the Port Angeles High School auditorium, 304 E. Park Ave., on Sunday with some of the most gorgeous music Ehling has ever encountered.
And Ehling has engaged with many a masterpiece in his 70-plus years of performing with and directing orchestras and choruses.
He’s known for leading the “Handel with Care” singalong “Messiah,” the “Nutcracker” orchestra and other groups across the North Olympic Peninsula.
Late last year, he decided to embark upon the Grand Mass, an unfinished work for double chorus, two sopranos, a tenor, a bass and an orchestra.
Ehling had led a performance of Mozart’s work about 30 years ago, when he was a choral director in Anchorage, Alaska.
“I remembered it as being really a special mass, with arias unequaled even in opera,” he said this week.
“What I forgot is how difficult it is.”
To perform with the 42-voice Peninsula Singers, Ehling hired four soloists from Seattle: sopranos Danya Clevenger and Janeanne Houston, tenor Ross Hauck and bass Barry Johnson.
Unfinished part
Then he set about orchestrating the part of the Mass that Mozart didn’t complete.
This task called on all of his musical knowledge, since he wants the complete work “to sound like Mozart, not Dewey Ehling.”
“It’s been a wonderful challenge,” said the conductor, an octogenarian.
“It is just the most glorious music; I know it’s [Mozart’s] best choral work; it’s a shame people don’t get to hear it more.”
The concert will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday with a motet, “Ave, Verum Corpus,” sung in Latin; then comes the “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem, and finally the Grand Mass.
Accompanying the singers will be organist Sandy Rawson and a 25-piece orchestra with members from the Port Angeles Symphony and the Port Townsend Community Orchestra, which Ehling also directs.
Musicologists still wonder, Ehling noted, why Mozart didn’t finish this mass. He began it in 1782, nine years before he died.
“But perhaps he was human after all and started music he never got around to finishing,” said the conductor, adding that Mozart lived only 35 years.
Ehling, naturally, is filled with anticipation right about now.
When asked what possessed him to take on a project that would daunt a less-seasoned director, he laughed.
“That’s part of who I am. I’m passionate about music,” he said. “I enjoy the challenge.”
Tickets to “An Afternoon with Mozart” are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, and free for children 12 and younger.
Outlets include The Buzz cafe, 128 N. Sequim Ave., Sequim; and the Itty Bitty Buzz, 110 E. First St., Port Angeles.
To learn more about the Peninsula Singers, visit www. PeninsulaSingers.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.