Celebrating 15 years of Mozart on campus

Continuing a favorite campus tradition, the 15th annual All-Mozart Concerts will be performed on Friday, April 6, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 8, at 3:30 p.m. in Dabney Lounge. The concerts, free and open to the public, “play consistently to standing-room-only audiences,” says Don Caldwell, Caltech Chamber Singers director and concert organizer.

This year’s program will feature the Chamber Singers and a piano soloist, sophomore Dana Sadava. The musicians will perform Mozart’s Requiem and his Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488.
According to Caldwell, the powerful and poignant Requiem, one of the composer’s most popular and enduring works, is usually associated with massive choirs and professional soloists. “In this case,” he says, “the chorus and solos will all be performed by students, in an ensemble numbering only 16 voices—something most musicians would find pretty astounding.” He describes the piano concerto as “quintessential Mozart, with engaging melody, probing thought, and great vitality and style.”

Over the years, the Mozart Concert has evolved into a format that usually includes choral, orchestral, and chamber works, with the Chamber Singers as mainstays. Participants have included members of the Caltech Chamber Music program, directed by Delores Bing; the Caltech Wind Ensemble, directed by Bill Bing; and the Caltech Chamber Orchestra, directed by Allen Gross. The concert programs have included “symphonies, serenades, opera scenes, a great variety of chamber music, and almost the entire Mozart choral repertoire,” Caldwell says.

The all-Mozart concert tradition was born in 1986 through a fortuitous set of circumstances. As a faculty lecturer in the humanities, Caldwell was teaching a course on the composer, and three of his students, a violinist, clarinetist, and singer, were talented musicians who had performed Mozart works. Additionally, Wendy Caldwell had been demonstrating some of Mozart’s piano concerti to the class, and to top it off, the Chamber Singers were learning one of his missae brevis (a short setting of the mass).

It seemed natural that the collective idea should arise: why not have the class put on an all-Mozart concert? The clarinetist, who also happened to be the ASCIT president, “was able to wheedle some money from the dean”; an open date in Dabney was reserved; and the first concert was set.

“What really led to the tradition was the unexpected audience response,” Caldwell says. The musicians, looking to play for a group of friends and family, were stunned to face an overflow crowd, with people lining the back walls. They’d failed to take note of the com-poser’s recent resurgence in popularity. “This was right on the heels of the movie Amadeus, and Mozart was ‘in’!”

Caldwell concludes, “Needless to say, it seemed like such a good thing that we thought, why not give it another go? And here we are 15 years later, anticipating another packed house.”
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