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Media Alert: Handel and Haydn Society Presents Harry’s Vocal Voyage: unique collection of a cappella works by Victoria and Poulenc
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 8, 2011
Contact: Kerry Israel, Dir. of Marketing & Communications
617 262 1815 or kisrael@handelandhaydn.org
National/International Contact: Nikki Scandalios
704 340 4094 or nikki@scandaliospr.com
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Program returns the Handel and Haydn Society to its roots as a choral society founded in 1815, and features soloists from the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus
Special gallery talk and performance presented in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
When:
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 8pm
St. Cecilia Church, 18 Belvidere St., Boston
Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 8pm
Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 3pm
The Memorial Church at Harvard University, One Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA
Repertoire:
Victoria: Magnificat Primi toni à 8
Poulenc: Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence
1. Timor et tremor
2. Vinea mea electa
Victoria: O vos omnes
Poulenc: Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence
3. Tenebrae factae sunt
4. Tristis est anima mea
Victoria: Litanniae Beatae Mariae
Poulenc: Salve Regina
Victoria: Nigra sum
Victoria: Quam pulchri sunt
Victoria: Vidi speciosam
Victoria: Salve Regina à 8
Harry Christophers, conductor
Members of the Handel and Haydn Society Chorus
Tickets:
Single tickets may be purchased through the Handel and Haydn Box Office by phone at 617 266 3605, online at www.handelandhaydn.org, or in person at the Handel and Haydn office, Horticultural Hall, 300 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston (M-F 10:00am – 6:00pm). Single tickets range from $38 to $75. Student rush available: starting one hour before curtain, $10 cash only with valid ID, best available seats subject to availability. Groups of 10 or more receive a 20% discount.
Details:
Artistic Director Harry Christophers leads this special program developed as part of Handel and Haydn Society’s exploration of their early years as a choral society in anticipation of the upcoming Bicentennial in 2015. This all-choral a cappella repertoire visits the works of Tomás Luis de Victoria and Francis Poulenc, whose sacred music – although separated by some 300 years – possesses similar traits of compassion and fervency.
“Scholar, mystic, priest, singer, organist and composer – six persons all rolled into one and that is, quite simply, why Victoria is the most outstanding composer of the Renaissance,” said Harry Christophers. “Four centuries later Francis Poulenc, who is often described as a witty hedonist who, in the giddy 1920s of France, tweaked the noses of the moribund establishment, composed some of the most powerfully committed music ever written for the church.”
In a continued effort to partner with the community and look at the repertoire outside the concert hall, H&H has partnered with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to pair the visual and performing arts for an evening. On March 30 at 6:30pm, Senior Curator Ronni Baer will lead a gallery talk in the museum’s Koch Gallery, followed by a performance in the space by H&H musicians.
“For me, the term ‘art’ encompasses more than just music,” explains Christophers. “Visiting the MFA and seeing these works which were painted around the same time that Victoria was composing makes a conductor and a listener gain a deeper understanding of both the music and the paintings. I have also no doubt that when Poulenc was writing his motets he conceived them as a painter would his canvas. The use of striking brush strokes applies as much to the music of Victoria and Poulenc as to the paintings of El Greco.”
Stepping away from its traditional two concert halls, the program will be performed in the appropriate and intimate settings of St. Cecilia and Harvard Memorial Churches.
Biographies:
Harry Christophers
Harry Christophers was appointed Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society in 2008 and began his tenure with the 2009–2010 Season. He has conducted Handel and Haydn each season since September 2006, when he led a sold-out performance in the Esterházy Palace at the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. Christophers and the Society have since embarked on an ambitious artistic journey that begins with the 2010–2011 Season with a showcase of works premiered in the United States by the Society over the last 195 years, and the release of the first of a series of recordings on CORO leading to the Society’s Bicentennial.
Christophers is known internationally as founder and conductor of the UK-based choir and period instrument ensemble The Sixteen. He has directed The Sixteen throughout Europe, America, and the Far East, gaining a distinguished reputation for his work in Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th century music. In 2000, he instituted the “Choral Pilgrimage,” a tour of British cathedrals from York to Canterbury. He has recorded close to 100 titles for which he has won numerous awards, including a Grand Prix du Disque for Handel Messiah, numerous Preise der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Awards), the coveted Gramophone Award for Early Music, and the prestigious Classical Brit Award (2005) for his disc entitled Renaissance. In 2009 he received one of classical music’s highest accolades, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year Award; The Sixteen also won the Baroque Vocal Award for Handel Coronation Anthems, a CD that also received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination. Harry Christophers is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Granada Symphony Orchestra and a regular guest conductor with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the Orquestra de la Comunidad de Madrid.
In October 2008, Christophers was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Leicester. Most recently, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and also of the Royal Welsh Academy for Music and Drama.
Teresa Neff
Teresa Neff received her Ph.D. in Musicology from Boston University. Her research interests center around Gottfried van Swieten, a late 18th century Viennese patron and composer. Neff’s edition of Swieten’s symphonies will be published by Artaria later this year. She has presented papers at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society and the Architecture/Music/Acoustics Conference. She presents concert preview lectures for Elderhostel and Boston Lyric Opera, and also teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Boston Conservatory.
Associated Events:
Gallery Talk and Performance
March 30, 2011 at 6.30pm
Free Admission
Koch Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Featuring William and Ann Elfers Senior Curator of Paintings Ronni Baer, Artistic Director Harry Christophers, and Society chorus members, painting and music meet in this unique cross-disciplinary evening. Art during the reign of Philip III will be discussed. Special thanks to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Pre-Concert Lecture
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 7pm
St. Cecilia Church, 18 Belvidere St., Boston
Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 7pm
Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 2pm
The Memorial Church at Harvard University, One Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA
Free with concert tickets
Musicologist Teresa Neff gives an illuminating look inside the music and historical context of the program. See the video program notes preview.
ABOUT HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY
The Handel and Haydn Society is a professional chorus and period instrument orchestra that is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of Historically Informed Performance, a revelatory style that uses the instruments and techniques of the time in which the music was composed. Founded in Boston in 1815, the Society is the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the United States and has a longstanding commitment to excellence and innovation: it gave the American premieres of Handel’s Messiah (1818), Haydn’s The Creation (1819), Verdi’s Requiem (1878) and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1879). The Society today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Harry Christophers, is committed to its mission “to perform Baroque and Classical music at the highest levels of artistic excellence and to share that music with as large and diverse an audience as possible.” The Society is widely known through its local subscription concerts, tours, concert broadcasts on National Public Radio, and recordings. The Society’s Lamentations and Praises won a 2002 Grammy Award and two of its CDs, All is Bright and Peace, appeared simultaneously in the top ten on Billboard Magazine’s classical music chart. In September 2010, Handel and Haydn released its first collaboration with Harry Christophers on the CORO label, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor – the first in a series of recordings leading to the Society’s Bicentennial in 2015. The 2010-2011 Season marks the 25th Anniversary of Handel and Haydn’s award-winning Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program that brings music education, vocal training and performance opportunities to more than 10,000 students annually in Greater Boston and beyond.
The Handel and Haydn Society is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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