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Winter Concert
Philadelphia Treasures
Saturday, February 27, 2010, 8 p.m.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia
Showcasing Philadelphia composers – works by Andrea Clearfield, Jennifer Higdon, Cynthia Folio, Teddy Poll, William Thompson, Keith Hampton, Stephen Caldwell, David Bennett Thomas, Samuel Barber, and Vincent Persichetti.
Tickets: $25, $20 for students/seniors
Family Concert
Voices of Philadelphia - One Family
Saturday, March 20, 7 p.m.
The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia
World premiere of Singing City Prize for Young Composers winning compositions. Guest choirs include Chester Children's Chorus, Northeast High, and Joyful Noise
– 200 voices join in the rousing finale!
Tickets: $20, $15 for students/seniors
62nd Anniversary Concert
Masterpieces of the 20th Century
Sunday, May 2, 4 p.m.
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, Bryn Mawr, PA
Tickets: $30, $25 for students/seniors
The Symphony of Psalms by Igor Stravinsky was written in 1930 and was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This piece is a three-movement choral symphony and was composed during Stravinsky's neoclassical period. The symphony derives its name from the use of Psalm texts in the choral parts, which Stravinsky was inspired to include because he had recently rejoined the Russian Orthodox Church following a sixteen year hiatus. The three movements are performed without a break, and the texts sung by the chorus are adapted from the Vulgate versions in Latin. Unlike many pieces composed for chorus and orchestra, Stravinsky said that “it is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing.”
Arnold Schonberg's Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth). Schönberg set Conrad Meyer's passionate poetic essay on Peace, Friede auf Erden, in 1907. The poet records mankind's struggle to overcome the cruelty of war from the time of Christ to the present. In the light of subsequent events in the twentieth century, both the poem and Schönberg's setting take on a prophetic aspect. In no other century in human history have so many lives been lost to war's devastation. Schönberg's decision to take up Meyer's powerful text when he did, and at the particular time he did, is consistent with where the composer himself was in his own development just then. He pushes against the accepted tonal boundaries with a passionate, even angry imagination, straying at times quite far from the established D major center of the work. D is historically the key of acclamation but also of hope. At each return of the textual motif of "peace on earth" we are brought back to the consoling, reassuring consonance of the home key. This relentless pulling away into the outer space of tonal ambiguity followed by a return to the serenity of D major parallels the themes of conflict and reassurance in the poem, in the world, and in the evolving artistic journey the composer himself was traversing at the time. Friede auf Erden is a milestone in twentieth century choral music, but it is also a sermon on hope.
Francis Poulenc's Gloria. Written between May and December 1959, it sets the Roman Catholic Gloria in excelsis Deo text, and is one of his most celebrated works. It includes writing for the soprano soloist that is nothing less than sublime.
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