August 11, 2005
For more information contact Peter Pulsifer, Concert Promotions Director, at 617-267-7442.
In its upcoming 57th season, Chorus pro Musica exhibits its renowned versatility in programs that celebrate the diversity of choral experience. Music Director Jeffrey Rink leads the chorus in a stirring Chinese cantata that has inspired national pride since World War II, the beautifully evocative Christmas cantata by Ottorino Respighi, deeply spiritual music by Anton Bruckner and Igor Stravinsky, and, in a raucous, rousing, thoroughly grand finale, a concert performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Attila, depicting the adventures and eventual downfall of Attila the Hun.
The season opens at Symphony Hall on Friday, Nov. 11 with Xian Xing Hai's Yellow River Cantata, presented in collaboration with the Newton Symphony Orchestra and Yan-Huang Performing Arts. Still one of the most treasured Chinese choral works, the cantata sets to music a poem written by Guang Weiran in November 1938 after the fall of the central Chinese city of Wuhan to the Japanese. With heroic melodies and folk influences, it depicts the bravura of Yellow River boatmen, the lament of a broken-hearted widow, and the joyful camaraderie of villagers. Chorus pro Musica has performed this stirring cantata to rave reviews in both Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York. Featured soloists are soprano Guiping Deng, baritones Ding Gao and Chailun Yueh, and tenor Wei Min Cai. The program will also include the Yellow River Piano Concerto and the Butterfly Lovers Concerto for violin.
The holiday season celebration includes two concerts at Old South Church in Copley Square, on Friday, Dec. 16 at 8 pm and Sunday, Dec. 18 at 3 pm. Both include traditional carols with organ and brass. The Friday evening performance features Ottorino Respighi's Lauda per la Natività del Signore, a beautiful pastoral cantata based on a 13th-century poem by lawyer-turned-Franciscan monk Jacopone da Todi that depicts the nativity of Jesus as the shepherds might have seen it. Famous for his luminous harmonies and vivid orchestral color, Respighi uses madrigals and ancient musical forms such as plainchant to conjure this mystical vision. Soloists are soprano Rochelle Bard, mezzo-soprano Susan Forrester, and tenor Martin Kelly. The Sunday afternoon performance is the chorus's second annual family holiday celebration, featuring seasonal favorites and carol sing-alongs. Children under 12 years of age will be admitted free of charge to Sunday's performance when accompanied by an adult.
On Friday, April 7, 2006, at 8 pm Chorus pro Musica performs liturgical music by Anton Bruckner and Igor Stravinsky at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, located at 135 Tremont Street opposite Boston Common. Bruckner's glorious Mass in E Minor is a beautiful combination of intricate Italian Renaissance polyphony and the dark sonorities and lush harmonies of the Romantic period. Stravinsky's more austere but also deeply spiritual Mass of 1948 evokes Gregorian modes and early polyphonic devices in a thoroughly modern work. Also included are Bruckner's Four Graduals, among the most beautiful short choral works in existence.
On Sunday, June 4, 2006, at 3 pm, Chorus pro Musica and Maestro Rink continue a tradition of exciting concert opera performances with Giuseppe Verdi's Attila. Rarely performed, Verdi's ninth opera is known for irresistible energy accentuated by “thundering orchestral writing, massive patriotic crowd scenes and a gutsy sense of good versus evil,” according to Peter Grahame Woolf of the opera Web site Seen and Heard International. Metropolitan Opera bass Raymond Aceto, who delighted Boston audiences as the devil incarnate in Chorus pro Musica's 2004 performance of Mefistofele, sings Attila. Soprano Paula Delligatti is the warrior princess Odabella, and baritone Robert Honeysucker is Ezio, commander of the Roman armies. The performance is sponsored by Concert Opera Boston.
In upcoming non-subscription concerts, Chorus pro Musica also performs Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra on Sept. 17 and 18 in Hyannis, Mass. Continuing a modern tradition, the chorus joins the Newton Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of Gaetano Donizetti's opera Don Pasquale on Jan. 22, 2006, at Rashi Auditorium in Newton. With the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, the chorus performs Franz Josef Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge on Jan. 29, 2006.
Chorus pro Musica is a distinguished, independent Boston-based chorus recognized for versatility and excellence in performing traditional, adventurous and seldom-heard works. The chorus was founded in 1949 by the late Alfred Nash Patterson and quickly built a superb reputation for its professional-level musical standards and innovative programming. These strengths have led to collaborations with such organizations as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra as well as with opera companies including the Opera Company of Boston and Commonwealth Opera. Jeffrey Rink, now in his 16th year as Music Director, is the 2005 recipient of the Jacopo Peri Award of the New England Opera Club for outstanding contributions in the art of opera.
For more information about Chorus pro Musica and to purchase tickets and select seats for concerts, see the Web site at www.choruspromusica.org.
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