2009 - 2010 Concert Season Detail

November: "A Musical Banquet"
November 6 (Marion); November 7+8 (Falmouth)

A delightful blend of musical "flavors" from the 18th and 20th centuries. Soloist for this concert will be Rebecca Grimes, soprano.

Chris DeBlasio: The Best Beloved

Chris DeBlasio (1959-1993) was a New York composer who wrote sacred music ofsoaring beauty. The Best Beloved epitomizes his style: accessible, affecting, lyrically melodic and harmonically rich. The texts are drawn from Jacobean poetry that use love as a metaphor for spiritual faith: Psalm 63 (in the King James’ version) and poems by John Donne, William Drummond and Francis Quarles.

George Frederic Handel: Laudate Pueri Domini in D, HWV237

During a span of slightly more than three years, from late 1706 to early 1710, a young Handel traveled, studied, composed, and performed in the major musical centers of Italy, meeting and learning from masters a Albinoni, both Scarlattis, Vivaldi, and Corelli. Although his successful Italian works were in the field of opera, following a papal ban on opera in Rome, he deftly switched his focus and produced a staggering number of sacred oratorios and cantatas such as Laudate Pueri Domini (Psalm 113.) One of three Latin Psalm settings that survive from Handel's Italian years, it dates from 1707 and was most likely included in the Carmelite Vespers for the Feast of the Madonna del Carmine on July 16 of that year. Verging on the operatic in its dramatic contrasts and intensity of expression, the music flows easily between poignant lyricism, virtuosic solo passages and triumphant choral fugues, and contains some of Handel’s most sublime music.

J.S. Bach: Overture (Orchestral Suite) No. 1 in C, BWV 1066

This is the earliest of four suites that Bach composed specifically for Friday night performances by friends in a Leipzig coffeehouse! While he follows the accepted form of the instrumental suite established by Lully, Bach transforms the popular dance forms of his day, - courante, gavotte, forlane, minuet, bourrée, and passepied, into the highest art. Stately and elegant, rich in its polyphony, and bound together by Bach’s unique genius for balancing musical “flavors,” it must have created a sumptuous Friday-night feast for the coffee-house crowd.

Tomaso Albinoni: Concerto for Two Oboes, Op. 9, No. 3 in F

Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni, (1671-1751) while most famous in his day as an opera composer (he wrote more than 50,) is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, especially his instrumental concertos. His music is reflective of the highest ideals of late Baroque musical art – intricate counterpoint, superbly crafted and elegant melodic lines - and was particularly influential upon two younger composers also featured on this concert: Bach and Handel.

An Elizabethan Yuletide Madrigal Feast
December 15 (Falmouth)

Join in what has become the region’s most unique and entertaining musical celebration of the Holiday spirit. We once again recreate the magic of an Elizabethan feasting hall as we invite you to join good Queen Elizabeth and her Court for an old world Yuletide Feast including featuring sumptuous food, gorgeous period costumes, delightful banter between our own Jester and the Queen’s Court and glorious Elizabethan music and dance. During the feasting listeners will be entertained by "merrie auld mastersingers" singing madrigals, Passacaglia ensemble playing their Renaissance instruments and sword dancing by the Vineyard Swordfish plus much more. Good holiday fun never goes out of style!

March: "Exploring the Mysteries of Love"
March 6 + 7 (Falmouth)

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger: Sextet No. 2 for strings

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger’s (1736 –1809) greatest fame was as a theorist and teacher (his greatest pupil was Ludwig van Beethoven) yet his compositions, which mark a bridge between the late Baroque and early Classical periods, are noted for their clarity of form and sincerity of expression.

Claudio Monteverdi: Magnificat á 10/14 from Selva morale e spirituale (1640)

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (1567-1643) is often regarded as a musical revolutionary. His music, like that of Albrechtsberger, marked a transition from what went before to what was coming – in this case from the Renaissance style to that of the Baroque. Also, like a much later Beethoven, he simultaneously represents the highest flowering of the old style as he is inventing the primary forms of the new. Monteverdi enjoyed great fame in his lifetime, writing one of the earliest operas, L'Orfeo, which is still regularly performed, and he wrote sacred music of such sublime intimacy and expression that it still speaks directly to the heart of the listener today as much as it did nearly four centuries ago.

Eric Whitacre: Sleep

“Haunting,” “spell-binding,” and “luscious” are just some of the words used to describe the music of Eric Whitacre. (1970-) Certainly one of the most performed living composers in the United States, his music is immediately recognizable by its distinctive harmonies and melodic shapes. “Sleep” (AKA "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening") was originally commissioned by a daughter in memory of her mother and father, who died within weeks of each other after 50 years of marriage. By a bizarre turn of legal fate, the original text from the Frost poem had to be replaced by another text. (That’s all we’ll tell you here…you have to come to the concert to get the juicy details and hear this heart-wrenchingly beautiful a cappella work!)

Ivan Hrušovský: Rytmus

Ivan Hrušovský (1927 –2001) studied musicology, philosophy, and aesthetics at Comenius University, and later composition at the Bratislava Conservatory and the Academy of Musical Arts. Rytmus, one of three “etudes” for chorus is a delightful tour de force for the singers, presenting both unique rhythmic and harmonic challenges within the framework of a lightning-paced Slovakian dance.

Gwyneth Walker: The Golden Harp

Gwyneth Walker (1947-) is proud resident of Vermont, and has received numerous awards for her compositions. The Golden Harp sets the poetry the Nobel Prize-winning Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. The poems are gentle and lyrical and their message is deeply spiritual, and yet very close to the center of human emotions. Tagore's poetry extols the beauty of the divine and the beauty of the soul within -- the beloved as creator, the beloved as lover. "Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well."

May: "O, Sing Unto The Lord"
May 1+2 (Falmouth)

Soloists for this concert will be Jesse Holstein, violin, and Laura Shamu, oboe.

J.S. Bach: Double Concerto in C minor, BWV 1060 for Violin, Oboe, Strings and Continuo

A “recovered” work of Bach’s from his days as director of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, the original manuscript has been lost This is a re-creation of that version from a later version Bach made for two harpsichords and orchestra. Framed by rhythmically vigorous allegro movements, the central adagio is a ravishing cantilena movement.

Carlyle Sharpe: Eternity’s Music (2005)

Boston University graduate Carlyle Sharpe (1965-) has set an evocative text by Walt Whitman to music that is serene, ethereal and mystical. The Providence Journal called his music “intense” and "imaginative.”

Libby Larsen: Crowding North

Libby Larsen (1950-) is one of America’s most prolific and most performed living composers, with a catalogue of over 400 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and over twelve operas. Her music has been praised for its dynamic, deeply inspired, and vigorous contemporary American spirit. Larsen has been hailed as “the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively” (USA Today) and her music has been praised for its “clear textures, easily absorbed rhythms and appealing melodic contours that make singing seem the most natural expression imaginable.” (Philadelphia Inquirer) Crowding North is based on poetry and writings of American poet Deborah Larsen (no relation) from her book Stitching Porcelain: After Matteo Ricci in 16th Century China.

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto No. 3 for Flute, D Major, "Il Gardellino"

Can bird song inspire great music? It certainly caught the ear of Antonio Vivaldi, widely celebrated for his exuberant, playful melodies in this delightful flute concerto from 1729. Of all the winds instruments, the flute is perhaps best suited to recreating the whistled silvery trills, sweetly warbled phrases, and plaintive notes of the European Goldfinch, the source of Vivaldi’s inspiration. A showpiece for the flutist, and an orthintho-musicological treat for the audience!

George Frederic Handel: Chandos Anthem No. 4, “O Sing Unto the Lord",

George Frederic Handel composed the eleven English anthems now known as the Chandos Anthems in 1717 and 1718 for the music-loving Earl of Carnarvon, (later the Duke of Chandos). These are cantata-like sacred devotional pieces of the style that first began to appear in England with Henry Purcell and John Blow. “O Sing Unto the Lord” is a perfect example of doing more with less. Though the format is a multiple-movements work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, inviting treatment on a grand scale, Handel had available only a couple of oboes, a small string ensemble and the choir. Yet the work is a gem. Handel's music captures well the changing moods of the Psalm text--from somber penitence to serene bliss to infectious joy to the raging of storms and seas.