Who says young people today have short attention spans?

That's certainly not the case for the 200-plus high school students who have spent the year practicing Mozart's "Requiem," which spans 80 pages and runs 35 to 40 minutes.

Three high school choirs -- the Lakeville North Chorale, the Lakeville South Chorale and the Shakopee High School Concert Choir -- will join the Dakota Valley Symphony and Chorus to perform the piece at the Four Choirs Festival next Sunday at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center.

Paul Wigley, director of the Lakeville North Chorale, and his students started working on "Requiem" in September, and they've labored with lengthy vocal passages, quick shifts from high notes to low, and polyphonic, or multiple-melody, sections.

"It is challenging," he said. "It's physically demanding and mentally demanding. Every time you sing it, you really have to be on top of your game."

"We've been pounding away," said director Michael Kovic of the Shakopee High School Concert Choir. "Once we came back after the break in January, it's been full force." Kovic said he told his students, "Some of the snowbirds go south for the winter. We're going to spend the month with Mozart."

It "tests the ranges of the singers," he said, "but the result is glorious." The piece was intended, he said, to be performed in big concert halls by a large group, a cultural shift from the intimate chamber music settings of the aristocracy.

Mozart died while writing the commissioned piece. "Somehow he kind of managed to kind of be writing his own requiem," said Wigley.

"It was his last great statement," said Dakota Valley Symphony director Stephen J. Ramsey. "It's particularly interesting for high school kids ... because of the wide range of emotion. There are moments of great power and very stern discipline and moments of beauty and sweetness. It will just rock the room with 200 singers."

Rebecca Sterner, a performer in the Dakota County Symphony Chorus, agrees. "There are parts that sound like hell breaking loose," she said.

The concert also features a violin performance by Ariana Kim, an international performer and Minneapolis native who now divides her time between Indianapolis, where she teaches at the University of Indianapolis, and New York City. Kim debuted at Carnegie Hall in 2008, and she performs regularly with the Knights, a group working on its second recording for Sony Classical Records, and the more avant-garde Ne(x)tworks, a contemporary improv ensemble that focuses on New York School composers of the '50s and '60s.

"There's always a large stack of music on my stand to be practiced," she said.

At next Sunday's performance, Kim will play Dvorak's Violin Concerto in A Minor (opus number 53). "You can hear little bits of 'New World Symphony,' which many people will know," Ramsey said. "The last movement is a lot like his 'Slavonic Dances.' It's a furiant. Bright, beautiful, full of Middle Eastern references and styles."

On her visit, Kim plans to drop in at several local schools. "She's really involved and motivated to see the next generation grow and develop," Ramsey said.

"Given the state of affairs for the fine arts in this country in this time, it's extremely important," Kim said. "In a day and age when we're so inundated with technology and popular music culture, we often miss some of the performing arts world and fine arts culture."

Liz Rolfsmeier is a Minneapolis freelance writer.