The last time i wrote about Australian composer Brett Dean was exploring his response to the music of J. S. Bach, as part of The Brandenburg Project. This time it’s Beethoven’s music that Dean is responding to, in his orchestral work Testament, which has recently been released in a performance by the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. Yet while the piece does fleetingly reference musical material by Beethoven (specifically his String Quartet No. 7, the first ‘Rasumovsky’ quartet), it responds more to the composer’s words and experiences, as described in the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, where Beethoven described the despair he felt due to his ever-worsening deafness. As such, Dean’s Testament (originally composed in 2002 for 12 violas – Dean’s former colleagues in the Berlin Philharmonic – and reworked for a Classical-sized orchestra in 2008) is therefore as much about the man as the music, a character study that taps into his emotions and temperament.

Dean finds an analogue for frustration and futility through use of bows without rosin, used in the opening of the work where the rapid material they’re evidently attempting to articulate emerges eerily muted, all the more uncomfortable due to the apparent effort behind the players’ actions. Notes occasionally blurt out, seemingly involuntarily, and the buzzing activity roams through the registers with an air of desperation, weak phrases spiralling outwards as it continues. As if through sheer bloody-mindedness, the strings manage to force out accents, at which point the strain seems to overcome them, falling back to barely audible momentum except for some vestigial high falling tones.

Rather than simply try again, the orchestra opts for something lyrical (a sudden moment of clarity), though this also reduces to quiet wavering, and a strong sense of solemnity starts to take over as the rapidity drains away, the music now rather plaintive. Yet Dean keeps the orchestra restive, and for several more minutes there’s a kind of impatient treading water, a succession of repetitive pitches, pizzicatos, faint notes and low growls begging the question more and more urgently about where on earth the music really wants to be going. Everything sounds poised.

A series of strong melodic quotations from Beethoven act as a catalyst, soon leading to a second half that becomes abruptly boisterous, overflowing with energy and barely-contained aggression, and even when the piece treads water again later on (shortly after a piccolo has let rip), even more than before there’s the distinct sense of serious quantities of power just below the surface. Though melody was the catalyst it finally becomes forgotten in the rhythmic impetus that’s by now driving Testament, bringing with it a descent into forceful tutti poundings, ending up stuck in a series of grooves. It’s as if the orchestra gets caught in spiralling outbursts, hammering out accents with half-mad desperation and rage. Though softer, the conclusion is no less incensed, still locked in place, letting loose a wild volley of flute accents, bubbling over with intensity until the very last moment.

The work is appropriately paired here with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. As with Dean’s contribution to The Brandenburg Project, where his piece preceded the Bach, the same is true on this album, and it makes for a fascinating listening experience, all the more so considering that Beethoven composed the Second Symphony at exactly the same time and place as his Heiligenstadt Testament. What we hear is something akin to two sides of the same person: Dean hinting at the desperation and dread tormenting the composer, Beethoven himself rising above these demons to create a symphony filled with joy and élan. The fact that, as with the Dean, it’s a live recording cuts both ways. On the one hand, it’s certainly not the best performance of Beethoven 2 out there (personally, i’ve never heard better than Karajan’s 1960 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic).

On the other hand, it’s a nonetheless superbly convincing performance that digs deep into the work’s broad dynamic contrasts and shapes them in distinctive ways. The Trio, in particular, is remarkable in the way Jurowski yanks back the tempo from the Scherzo to transform it into a much more introspective music. Yet it’s the first and last movements that impress most, especially the first, taken here almost recklessly fast, which in the wake of Dean’s Testament gives the impression that the orchestra now has something to prove. Several times it sounds as if the piece could come completely off the rails (the start of the exposition repeat is a hazardous moment), but in the end the orchestra’s ebullience is matched by a palpable sense of unity. The same is true in the finale, which is practically over before you even realise it’s got going.

i’ve often written disparagingly about composers endlessly requested to write pieces that ‘respond’ to existing music, but Brett Dean’s Testament goes beyond that simplistic conceit and teases out something much more meaningful, offering insights into a complex, damaged composer who both channelled and overcame his fears and anguish to create music that, over two centuries, still sounds positively white hot.

Released on the Bayerische Staatsoper label, Testament / Symphony No. 2 is available on CD and download.

LOWELL — In Catholicism, a requiem is a Mass for the dead, and the music that accompanies the service is meant to help one’s soul pass through to the afterlife.

But surprisingly, these grim moments of mourning can produce commanding, fun and dramatic music fit for a 200-person performance.

Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi’s 19th-century Requiem is just that, and the large choral orchestral work is coming to Lowell.

UMass Lowell, along with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and Nashoba Valley Chorale, will stage Verdi’s Requiem in a free community concert on Friday, Nov. 4, at 8 p.m. at the university’s Durgin Hall. They’ll also perform at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium on Sunday, Nov. 6, at 4 p.m., but tickets are $15 to $25. It will be the CSO’s first performance in its 48th season.

Jonathan Richter, a visiting lecturer at UMass Lowell who directs several of the university’s choirs, said Verdi’s Requiem is recognizable, calling it a “quintessential” work and one that is meaningful to the students and recent alumni who’ll perform it.

“Verdi has his very successful, very fun and expressive, operatic style,” Richter said, “and he imports that into the requiem tradition in a really effective way.”

About 130 choir singers from UMass Lowell’s University Choir and Chamber Singers, as well as from the Nashoba Valley Chorale, will gather behind the orchestra during the concert, and four international soloists will also take the stage, said Cynthia Woods, music director of the CSO.

There will be a full orchestra with “full brass,” Woods said, including a cimbasso — a huge, rather rare tuba that “goes all the way down to the floor.”

At the beginning of the piece’s “dies irae” — which translates from Latin to “day of wrath” — audience members will hear trumpets from behind them, beside them and in front of them, harkening judgment day.

“It’s a really fantastic effect,” Woods said. “As they create the tumultuous arrival of the ends of days, the brass will come crushing in and be very, very loud and really fun. Everybody likes that movement.”

For many of Richter’s students, this is their first large-scale concert of their college career, since the pandemic basically halted big, live performances. But music department alumni will also sing on stage, since they, too, missed out on that experience.

As with all the choirs’ other performances, understanding the context in which the music is made is vital, said Dylan MacLeod, a graduate student at UMass Lowell studying music education who will be singing in the show. The work is also entirely in Latin, so MacLeod and the other performers also needed to know what exactly they were singing and in turn, what emotions to display, he said.

Though he hadn’t heard of the Requiem before, MacLeod said it’s a “historically relevant,” roughly 90-minute piece that takes listeners on an emotional roller coaster. He called it a “banger of a musical piece.”

“It’s literally an epic from beginning to end, it’s one concrete piece of music that somebody created so long ago but we are recreating in real time, and it’s going to be the full concert experience,” MacLeod said. “They are going to come away feeling all types of emotions, relief and grief, sadness, on the edge of their seat. They’re going to get it all from watching us perform.”

By uniting music majors with adult performers in a “multigenerational” collaboration, Richter said he hopes to show students that they can continue to stay involved in the arts throughout their lives.

“There’s no better example to show them than the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and Nashoba Valley Chorale,” Richter said, “because they’re making music with people of all ages and doing really important work along the way.”

But another major part of the concert is community engagement. The concert series will highlight Lowell nonprofit House of Hope, which works to help Massachusetts families experiencing homelessness.

“There’s so many wonderful nonprofit organizations that people don’t know about,” Woods said. “We decided to go with a Lowell community organization this time because we’re up there, and an organization that we felt is really getting in there and building the blocks of a better community.”

Anne Watson Born is the director of the Nashoba Valley Chorale, a Littleton-based group of about 75 people who will also sing at the concert. She said the requiem “always elicits the best music from every composer that sets it,” including Mozart.

The chorale performed the Verdi Requiem in 2016, she said, and will also perform the Mozart Requiem with Symphony New Hampshire in March. Verdi’s piece is “exciting, wild” in some parts, but “gloriously tender” in others, Watson Born said.

“It’s a very engaging work,” she said. “It’s really a fantastic piece.”