Jefferson and Mozart
Joseph McLellan, p. C14, The Washington Post, March 27, 2001
Lovers of neglected music had a rare opportunity Sunday when Thomas Beveridge and the National Men's Chorus performed Mozart's Masonic music with a chamber orchestra and solos by tenor Benjamin Warschawski and bass Paul Appeldoorn. The performances, superbly styled and introduced with short, informative commentaries by the conductor, were given in the most appropriate available auditorium: the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria.
The last composition Mozart completed and conducted before succumbing to his final illness was a cantata, No. 623 in Koechel catalogue, called the "Freimaurermusik," celebrating the joys of Masonic brotherhood. Mozart had been a Freemason for seven years, and his three Masonic cantatas, his songs on Masonic themes and the solemn Masonic Funeral Music are not nearly as familiar as their musical quality would justify. They were not written for public performance, and private occasions for them disappeared two years after Mozart’s death when the Masons were banned in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Sunday’s program was not made up entirely of rarities; after intermission, the chorus sang Randall Thompson’s "Testament of Freedom, on of the classic American choral works of the 20th century, and among the explicitly Masonic works in the program’s first half, Beveridge included the crypto-Masonic chorus "O Isis und Osiris" from The Magic Flute.
The National Men's Chorus, founded less than two years ago, has already developed a distinctive profile. The chorus sang with smooth, well-blended tone, emotional conviction and a clarity of diction that was a pure joy, particularly in the eloquent texts of "Testament of Freedom," which were written by Thomas Jefferson.