The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (TMChoir) will close their 130th season with performances of two choral masterworks. Led by conductor Jean-Sébastien Vallée, the choir will perform Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis on April 4 at Roy Thomson Hall, and Duruflé’s Requiem at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church on May 9th. While both are large-scale pieces of sacred music, and settings of catholic liturgies, these two pieces couldn’t be more different. 

Jean-Sébastien Vallée

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is a massive piece. The work requires a very large orchestra, both by 19th century standards as well as 2025 standards. Here’s the team: a fully-fledged TMChoir will be joined by soprano Tracy Cantin, mezzo soprano Simona Genga, tenor Frédéric Antoun, baritone Brett Polegato and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Fitting the entire roster of performers on the Roy Thomson Hall stage will be a feat of its own. 

If you’ve never heard of Missa Solemnis, congratulations─you’re in the majority! Beethoven didn’t write very much sacred music, making this rarely performed mass all the more precious. This performance by the TMChoir will pay tribute to the choir’s impressive history of 130 years of musical experiences to the Greater Toronto area: it was the TMChoir who provided the piece with its Canadian premiere, almost 100 years ago. The five movements — which he began in 1819 and finished in 1823 — correspond to the five parts of the Catholic mass Ordinary. Taken together, these movements are emotionally moving and transcendent in their intensity. 

Tracy Cantin (top left), Simona Genga (top right), Frédéric Antoun(bottom left), Brett Polegato (bottom right)

Fast-forward to May as the TMChoir returns with Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, a far more meditative work. While the tone is distinctly different, the themes are no less intense. In his own programme notes, Duruflé notes that “this Requiem is not an ethereal work singing of detachment from human concerns. In the unchanging form of Christian prayer, it reflects the anguish of humanity faced with the mystery of its final end.” Originally composed in 1947, and later revised in 1961, the piece is one of only 12 opuses (and 11 published works) by the perfectionist French composer. Interestingly, all of the composer’s work was either for keyboard, or, as this one, for choir. The music draws heavily on the Gregorian Mass for the Dead, and on the overall musical contour of plainchant. 

Duruflé’s Requiem achieves a totally different intensity than Beethoven’s. Influenced by the likes of Debussy and Ravel, the music is lyrical, flowing, and introspective: Duruflé writes that “it is often dramatic, or filled with resignation, or hope or terror, just as the words of the Scripture themselves, which are used in the liturgy. It tends to translate human feelings before their terrifying, unexplainable or consoling destiny.” There are nine sections in the piece, which bring together choir and keyboard as organist Jonathan Oldengarm and pianist Irene Gregorio take the stage. While performances of this requiem sometimes feature an orchestra, Duruflé published four different arrangements to accommodate various configurations: for solo organ, large orchestra and organ, reduced orchestra and organ, and for piano. Also on the program will be works by TMChoir’s 24/25 composer-in-residence, Aaron Manswerll, Felix Mendelssohn, and Stephanie Martin. 

Irene Gregorio (left), Jonathan Oldengarm (middle), Aaron Manswell (right)