This year’s Spring Concert featured performances of Mozart's Requiem, with soloists Rosemary McKerchar, soprano, Morag Campbell, contralto, Mike Towers, tenor and David Danson, bass, and Randall Thomson’s "Frostiana". The concert was held in a new venue for the choir – St Stephen’s Centre - and we were, as ever, superbly accompanied by the Edinburgh Players who also gave a stirring performance of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture.Mozart’s Requiem K626 was his last work apart from the short choral Ave Verum Corpus. The work was commissioned by Count Walsegg who intended to pass it off as his own composition. It was not completed by Mozart, and it is not clear how far sketches may have existed for the remainder. Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed the work on the instructions of Mozart’s widow Constanze, but only after she had approached various other musicians. So Süssmayr’s claims to have Mozart’s close instructions for completion may well have no foundation. It is now accepted that the Sanctus, the Benedictus and the Hosanna are wholly by Süssmayr and only the first eight bars of the Lacrymosa are Mozart’s. The orchestration is dark, there being no place for flutes or oboes, and with much use of sombre trombones.

The choral music of Randall Thompson, though little known outside his native country, is standard repertoire for American community choirs. Frostiana, settings of seven poems by Robert Frost, was written for the two hundredth anniversary of incorporation of the town of Amherst in Massachusetts in 1959. The first and last pieces are for mixed chorus. The Telephone is a dialogue between the men’s and ladies’ choirs, and the other movements are for men’s or ladies' voices. The deceptively straightforward music concentrates on creating sensitive settings of the words. The orchestration differs in each piece to give different colour to the poems.

Beethoven’s Coriolan of 1807 was written for a play by H J von Collin about a triumphant Roman general who was exiled for his unacceptable political views and who returned to besiege Rome as leader of the Volscians. Appeals from the great and good of the city having failed, a deputation of Roman matrons was sent out including his mother, his wife and two children to plead with him. His sense of outrage and pride was overcome and he withdrew his forces. Within the musical structure usually found in the first movement of a Classical symphony, Beethoven succeeds in characterising Coriolanus’ pride and the softer pleading of his family. The turmoil of his indecision is heard in the development section, and the coda depicts the departure of his forces.