Choral/Orchestral Concert
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MUSIC CHORAL/ORCHESTRAL CONCERT Gaillard Municipal Auditorium June 5 at 7:30pm SPONSORED BY SOUTH CAROLINA BANK AND TRUST Joseph Flummerfelt, conductor Katharine Goeldner, mezzo-soprano Tyler Duncan, baritone Westminster Choir Joe Miller, director Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus Robert Taylor, director Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra PROGRAM Ave verum corpus, K 618 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91) From Quattro pezzi sacri (Four Sacred Pieces) Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) I. Ave Maria II. Stabat mater INTERMISSION Requiem, Op. 9 Maurice Duruflé (1902–86) I. Introit (Requiem aeternam) II. Kyrie eleison III. Offertory (Domine Jesu Christe) IV. Sanctus – Benedictus V. Pie Jesu VI. Agnus Dei VII. Communion (Lux aeterna) VIII. Libera me IX. In Paradisum PROGRAM NOTES Ave Maria and Stabat mater (Verdi) What are we to make of Verdi’s final works? All are sacred pieces, Ave verum corpus (Mozart) though Verdi was an ardent atheist. All have unstable harmonies The first half of this concert presents final works by two of the sometimes bordering on atonality, though Verdi was a supreme greatest composers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The exquisite lyricist. All are strikingly non-operatic, offering only a single, brief Mozart miniature Ave verum corpus was written only six months vocal solo (in the Te Deum, heard at the 2010 Festival), though before the composer’s death at age 35. A mere 46 bars, it is a Verdi was Italy’s greatest opera composer. Yet they premiered at summation of Mozart’s ability to say something profound in the the Paris Opera in 1898, and Toscanini conducted the first Italian simplest possible way. Once heard, its otherworldly melody is performance the same year. never forgotten, and its harmony has a subtlety that invokes a brief Verdi, who lived nearly half a century longer than Mozart, wrote moment of sublimity. Composed for Mozart’s friend, choirmaster these Quattro pezzi sacri (Four Sacred Pieces) in his 80s. Like the Anton Stoll, for the Feast of Corpus Christi, it is a radically pared final works of Beethoven and Liszt, they are not conservative old- down example of Mozart’s determination to create a new type person gestures, but spare, audacious leaps into the unknown, as if of church music based on clarity and emotional directness rather the artist has nothing to lose and no longer cares what people think. than the “learned” counterpoint of the Baroque. Mozart wrote Ave The Ave Maria is the most abstract and austere of the four pieces, verum corpus in 1791, the same year as his clarinet concerto, Die so much so that Verdi was ambivalent about programming it with Zauberflöte, and other late masterworks commonly regarded as the others. (Toscanini omitted it from the Italian premiere.) Here the pinnacles of Western music. As Aaron Copland put it, they fill us orchestra disappears, leaving an a cappella choir to contend with with “awe and wonder, not unmixed with despair. The wonder we a mysterious scale that Verdi unearthed in the Gazzetta Musicale share with everyone; the despair comes from the realization that di Milano. Unmoored from traditional tonality, this sequence only this one man at this one moment in musical history could have nonetheless acts as a cantus firmus, a backdrop over which the rest created works that seem so effortless and close to perfection.” of the chorus wanders in unsettled chromatic patterns of its own. 100 MUSIC CHORAL/ORCHESTRAL CONCERT The piece does manage to find its way back to its home key in the church musicians who, in the medieval era, composed the treasure final modulation, creating a hard-earned closure. chest of Gregorian chants that are a permanent part of Christian A sense of sublime detachment permeates this Ave Maria (not service music…Whatever his means, Duruflé unquestionably made to be confused with the tragically passionate Ave Maria in Verdi’s a unique art work with a powerful personal stamp.” opera Otello). Verdi meant it as a technical exercise, but it comes Duruflé himself commented on how he used Gregorian themes: across as a search for spiritual truth rather than the solution to “Sometimes I was inspired by [the text], and sometimes left it a harmonic puzzle. It has a rarified purity that has caused many altogether—for example, in certain developments suggested by to hear it as an homage to Palestrina, but its fearless instability the Latin text, especially the Domine Jesu Christe, Sanctus and seems to look forward to an uncertain future rather than back Libera…I strove above all to be influenced by the particular style to a glorious past. Indeed, when the Westminster Choir last of the Gregorian themes, thus conciliating, as far as possible, the performed the piece at Spoleto ten years ago, it sounded like the Gregorian rhythms fixed by the Benedictine Monks of Solesmes “modern” work on the program. with the demands of modern practice.” The Stabat mater is Verdi’s final work. Setting a familiar 13th-century In this performance, “modern practice” is immediately visible in text depicting the suffering and transfiguration of Mary, it opens with the massed forces onstage. Joseph Flummerfelt presents the work hollow octaves and fifths from the orchestra, and moves briskly in full orchestral dress, something done all too infrequently. It is through the text (unlike the longer settings of Dvořák, Poulenc, and often performed with organ accompaniment only or strings and others). It offers serene choral whisperings, sudden apocalyptic optional brass, depriving the listener of Duruflé’s seductively colorful outbursts from the brass, mysterious modal chords, chromatic orchestration: the tenderly flowing strings in the Introit, Kyrie, and entreaties in the strings, and ambiguous a cappella fragments. Agnus Dei; the screaming trumpets in the Domine Jesu Christe; the A recurring four-note descending pattern provides an anchor, rich cellos in the Pie Jesu; the liquid brass concluding the Agnus Dei; but not a firm one: the piece is content to hover in an enigmatic the elegant (and unmistakably French) winds in Lux aeterna; the realm unique to late Verdi where every ray of hope is challenged plaintive trumpet at the end of Libera me; the massed eruptions in by a jolt of darkness. At the end, strings float downward and wait the Sanctus; and the otherworldly harp and high strings reaching for for the choir to quietly intone a final vision of Paradise, but the the heavens in the concluding In Paradisum. The final mysterious lower brass comes back in octaves like a ghost from the work’s seventh chord in the depths of the orchestra after so many bright opening to offer a somber corrective. sonorities ends the piece on a profoundly satisfying note. Program notes © 2012 Jack Sullivan Requiem (Duruflé) Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem is one of the most transporting large- JOSEPH FLUMMERFELT (conductor) has scale works in the modern choral-orchestral repertory. Its fusion of long been recognized as one of the world’s spirituality and sensuality has proven irresistible over the past 65 years, great choral conductors. In 2004 he was named making Duruflé a prominent name in 20th-century music even though Conductor of the Year by Musical America. he composed only a handful of other, relatively obscure, pieces. He has collaborated with other eminent Written in 1947 for mixed choirs, mezzo-soprano, baritone, conductors and the world’s major orchestras, organ, and orchestra, the Requiem displays an astonishing variety of including the Berlin and Vienna philharmonics, textures, including soaring fugues, simple chord structures, haunting the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, and many vocal solos, and mystical offstage choirs. Unlike the settings of American orchestras. Choirs prepared by Berlioz, Verdi, and Britten, it is never bombastic or operatic. The vocal Flummerfelt have been featured on over 45 recordings, including solos are few but memorable, especially the heartrending Pie Jesu. Grammy Award–winning releases of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Duruflé’s Requiem was inspired by the 1890 Requiem of Gabriel Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. Among his many recordings Fauré, who also composed a soulful Pie Jesu. Like Fauré, Duruflé with the Westminster Choir, a Delos release of choral works by Brahms, knew that the old church modes fit uncannily well with modern Singing for Pleasure, was chosen by The New York Times as a favorite. French harmonies, and like his predecessor he created a requiem His last recording with the choir, Heaven to Earth, also received full of hope and humanity rather than hell and damnation, great critical acclaim. Maestro Flummerfelt made his conducting eschewing the Dies irae (Day of Wrath), often the centerpiece of debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1988, and in 2001 he led concert requiems. Duruflé’s sound world is very much his own. His the Philharmonic and the Westminster Choir in the world premiere harmonies are mistier and more unmoored than Fauré’s, and he of Stephen Paulus’s Voices of Light. He has also appeared with explores a greater variety of sonority and emotion. The sounds are numerous symphony orchestras both nationally and internationally. by no means confined to the ethereal: the big climax in the Sanctus From 1971 to 2004 Joseph Flummerfelt served as Artistic Director delivers a frisson no matter how may times one hears it, and the and Principal Conductor of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, luxurious dissonance in Domine Jesu Christe reminds us this is a mid- New Jersey. He has been one of the artistic leaders of Spoleto Festival 20th century work even though its spirit goes back much further. USA since its founding, and for 23 years was the Maestro del Coro This Requiem is a combination of Gregorian chant and French for the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy.