Erin Helyard will conduct Mozart’s Requiem for the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Robert Catto.
It begins with a teenage prodigy in Salzburg and ends with the unfinished notes of a genius in Vienna.
In Mozart’s Requiem, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra (CSO) takes audiences on an extraordinary musical journey as part of its 2025 Llewellyn Series, culminating in one of the most powerful works in the classical canon.
For guest conductor Erin Helyard, the experience is especially momentous.
“It’s my first time conducting Mozart’s Requiem, so it’s very exciting for me,” he says.
With the CSO’s recent concerts selling out, this performance is set to be another extraordinary occasion – especially because the requiem’s reputation precedes it.
The work has been immortalised not only in concert halls but across popular culture, featuring in films and series from Amadeus and The Big Lebowski to Peaky Blinders and The Crown.
“I first got to know the work as a teenager through the movie Amadeus. A movie about classical music going blockbuster – already that’s something,” Helyard says.
That blockbuster helped romanticise the legend surrounding the requiem itself: a mysterious patron, ominous premonitions, Mozart dying a pauper.
The composer was indeed a few lines into the Lacrymosa when he died. His widow handed it over to a student so it could be completed for a “mystery” client. But Helyard says elements of the story have been exaggerated.
“Count Walsegg did commission the work and wanted to pass it off as his own. Mozart did need the money, and took the job. But one of the biggest myths was that he died a pauper when in reality he was doing quite well in Vienna by the late 18th century,” he says.
“I don’t know if he saw presentiments of his own death, but when he died suddenly and unexpectedly, his friends rallied to complete the work so his wife could get the money.”
On stage, the music tells its own story: anguished yet luminous, intimate yet monumental. Helyard says with full orchestra and chorus, Mozart’s Requiem is a true spectacle of sound.
“It’s a work that looks back as a retrospective of the past and forward at the innovation of the future,” he says. “It offers something for everyone and it’s a wonderful piece to hear live.”
The CSO program frames this masterpiece within Mozart’s broader life and legacy. The concert opens with the sunny Divertimento in D major, written when Mozart was 16 – a piece designed purely to delight.
Between Salzburg and Vienna, audiences will hear Dreams of the Earth I, a work by Australian composer Corinna Bonshek. Inspired by the beauty of cicadas and birdsong, it weaves in threads of unease and hope in response to our changing climate, offering a poignant bridge to Mozart’s final notes.
The show ends with Requiem in D minor. Paired with the vitality of young Mozart and with Bonshek’s reflections on the earth, it makes for a journey through time, creativity and humanity.
Mozart’s Requiem plays 24 and 25 September at Llewellyn Hall – book now via the CSO.
