Concerts
2012-2013 Season
Click here for the 2012-2013 season brochure
Saturday, November 17, 2012 8pm
Life, Love and Fate
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
Church of the Holy Name
1689 Centre Street, West Roxbury
Our 38th season begins with Carmina Burana, one of the most popular and beloved works in the choral repertoire. Carl Orff composed this dramatic cantata in 1936, using selections from a rich trove of 12th & 13th secular poems discovered in a Bavarian monastery. While a few of the texts are morally uplifting, most feature the lusty exploration of earthly delights. Orff’s music is intentionally approachable and filled with rhythmic energy, as exemplified in the instantly recognizable opening and closing hymn, “O Fortuna.”
Newton-based Youth Pro Musica will be the children’s choir for the performance, which will also feature accompaniment on two pianos and percussion.
Susan Consoli, Soprano
Matthew Anderson, Tenor
Tom Jones, Bass
Luminous Beginnings
Sunday, March 24, 2013 3pm
Haydn: The Creation
Sanders Theatre, Harvard University
45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Come experience the grandeur of Haydn at his finest as we present The Creation, one of the composer’s greatest masterpieces. Inspired by hearing Handel’s oratorios on a trip to London in 1794-5, Haydn began to write The Creation shortly afterward. It was a triumph when first presented in 1799. Filled with ground-breaking orchestral color, and creative interplay between chorus, instruments and text, it still offers tremendous vividness and emotional power more than two centuries later. From chaos to dazzling sunlight, lions and tigers, whales and worms, Haydn’s forceful and original telling of the creation story is not to be missed.
Kendra Colton, Soprano
Peter Halpern, Tenor
David Kravitz, Baritone
Enjoy free parking at the Broadway Garage, one block from Sanders Theatre on Felton Street.
Tranquility and Solace
Saturday, May 11, 2013 8pm
Gabriel Faure: Requiem
Second Church in Newton
60 Highland Street, West Newton
Newton Choral Society (NCS), under the direction of David Carrier, will present Fauré “Requiem” as the featured choral work in its Spring concert, Tranquility and Solace, with Susan Consoli, Soprano, David McFerrin, Baritone, and Ross Wood, Organist. The full chorus will also perform “For lo, I raise up” and “Beati Quorum Via” by Charles Villiers Stanford complemented by Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus” and Fauré’s “Cantique de Jean Racine,” both performed by the chamber chorus.
Composed in 1888, the Fauré Requiem has been a treasured favorite since the mid-20th-century. Fauré deliberately chose a new and gentler direction in his Requiem, omitting traditional movements (Dies Irae and Tuba Mirum) that composers such as Mozart and Verdi used as platforms for drama. Instead, he added movements of intimacy: the tender Pie Jesu and ethereal In Paradisum. In so doing, Fauré painted a mood of serenity and consolation: a vision of heaven without the threat of damnation..
Susan Consoli, Soprano
David McFerrin, Baritone
Ross Wood, Organist
Past Seasons
2011-2012 Season
Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 8pm
Royal Riches: Beethoven Mass in C and Haydn Te Deum
Soloists: Dana Schnitzer, soprano, Oriana Dunlop, mezzo, Ethan Bremner, tenor, and Dana Whiteside, baritone
Our season begins with intriguing contrasts: Two pieces composed in the same decade for the same patron, but a world apart in structure and feeling. Beethoven’s Mass in C has been called “a long underrated masterpiece.” The composer’s first mass, written in 1807, was a major departure from those of his one-time teacher Haydn. More daring and less predictable, it pushed the boundaries of harmonic development for the time. Critics have compared Mass in C favorably to Beethoven’s famous Missa Solemnis, written 15 years later, for its greater directness and emotional appeal.
Haydn’s Te Deum represents the composer at the height of his powers. Written for Empress Marie Therese, over the objections of Prince Esterházy who coveted Haydn’s genius for himself, it was first presented in 1800 during the visit of Lord Nelson. This three-part choral drama is filled with joyous festivity, complete with trumpets and drums.
Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 3pm
Luxurious Harmonies: Frank Martin Mass for Double Chorus and Pinkham Wedding Cantata
Shake off the winter blues with the rich harmonies of Swiss composer Frank Martin, and Boston’s own Daniel Pinkham. Martin, son of a Calvinist minister, wrote his Mass for Double Chorus in 1922, but considered it a “youthful sin” and did not allow it to be performed till 1963. It has since emerged as one of the great works of the 20th century for unaccompanied chorus. Offering rich vocal textures, it is noted both for its grand scale and profound intimacy.
Daniel Pinkham composed Wedding Cantata in 1956 as a gift for the marriage of two friends. Using Biblical texts from the Song of Solomon, it encompasses many moods in the course of its four movements. Mark Feldhusen will accompany on piano.
Saturday, May 12, 2012 at 8pm
The Splendor of Bach:
Singet dem Herrn, Cantata 182, Lobet den Herrn and Cantata 51
Soloists: Susan Consoli, soprano, Deborah Rentz-Moore, mezzo, Charles Blandy, tenor, and David McFerrin, baritone
Prepare for an evening of delights! We conclude our season with a rich array of Bach’s choral music, including one of his most ambitious motets, Singet dem Herrn for double chorus, along with Cantata 182, Himmelskönig, sei willkommen, one of Bach’s earliest cantatas featuring an unusual orchestration, with recorder, a single violin, two violas, plus cello and organ. A small ensemble will also be singing William Byrd’s sacred motet in three parts ‘Laudibus in sanctis’. The words are a paraphrase of Psalm 150. Cantata 51, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, a jubilant and virtuosic soprano cantata, will be performed by Susan Consoli.
2010-2011 Season
Johannes Brahms, Requiem
Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 8:00pm
Holy Name Parish, 1689 Centre Street, West Roxbury
Soloists: Leah Hungerford, soprano and David McFerrin, baritone
With the death of his mother in 1865 and then his friend composer Robert Schumann in 1866, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) set to writing a composition to console all who grieve. The result was Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem). Written over the course of several years, his Requiem was a departure from the traditional Latin mass for the dead and offered instead a moving and comforting message of hope that has endeared this masterpiece to generations. James M. Orent and the Newton Symphony Orchestra will join NCS, along with soloists Leah Hungerford, soprano, and David McFerrin, baritone. Our program also features Brahms’s motet O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf (Oh Savior, open wide the heavens), Op. 7, No. 2 (pub. 1879) – a smaller setting of five choral variations that ingeniously incorporate both Renaissance and Baroque influences.
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vespers
Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 3:00pm
Holy Name Parish, 1689 Centre Street, West Roxbury
Soloists: Stephanie Kacoyanis, alto, and Matt Anderson, tenor
Written in 1915 on the eve of the Russian revolution, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, All Night Vigil, is both a devotional masterpiece and powerful statement of Russian nationalism. The Vespers is an extended work of unaccompanied chorus which displays a wide range of emotion and colors all rooted in the beauty and richness of the Russian Orthodox liturgy.
Franz Josef Haydn, Missa Sancta Nikolai (St. Nikolai Mass) and
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Vesperae de Dominica (Sunday Vespers)
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 8pm
Our Lady Help of Christians Church, 573 Washington Street, Newton
Soloists: Maria Ferrante, soprano, Julia Teitel, mezzo, Martin Kelly, tenor, and Thomas Jones, baritone
We close our 35th season with a concert featuring works by the two masters – Haydn and Mozart. Franz Joseph Haydn’s (1732-1809) Missa Sancta Nikolai (St. Nikolai Mass) in G, Hob. XXII, No. 6 is thought to have been composed to celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas – the name day of his employer, Hungarian Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy – on December 6, 1777. Vesperae de Domenica (Sunday Vespers) K. 321 was written two years later in 1779 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
