Best piece ever written for percussion?
Trinity Church Wall Street hosted one of the earliest American performances of Handel’s Messiah in 1770.
Now, for the 250th anniversary, it’s giving the Facebook premiere.
Practically a second coming.
Press release below.
This season, when the pandemic has made most live performance impossible, Trinity keeps the tradition alive with a special interactive Facebook Premiere at 3pm on December 13, when viewers can tune in to see a complete concert performance of the work, captured live last year in high definition, by the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Trinity Baroque Orchestra and Music Director Julian Wachner. The oratorio’s movements will be interspersed with personal video messages from ten key Trinity artists, and there will be a live comment thread for audience members to chat with Wachner, the musicians and other viewers around the world. Representing the culmination of Trinity’s “Messiah Week” – five days of related webcasts in the daily “Comfort at One” series – the Facebook Premiere invites music-lovers everywhere to come together at the end of this difficult year to take solace in Handel’s enduring and uplifting work.
Trinity was instrumental in pioneering the Messiah in the Americas, hosting one of the first American performances in 1770. As Baroque specialists whose vocal soloists are drawn from the choir and whose instrumentalists are expert performers on historical instruments, Wachner, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra now rank among the foremost exponents of the perennial holiday favorite. Their authentic approach “demonstrate[s] why historically informed performance makes a difference,” notes the Wall Street Journal. As the New York Times observes: “With the church’s choir and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, a period band, Mr. Wachner provides gritty, gutsy, edge-of-the-seat performances.”
The upcoming Facebook Premiere will feature personal video messages from Trinity’s Associate Organist Janet Yieh; The Choir of Trinity Wall Street’s sopranos Sonya Headlam, Michele Kennedy and Molly Netter, alto Pamela Terry, baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert and basses Paul An, Enrico Lagasca and Jonathan Woody; and Wachner himself. Offering viewers a rare glimpse of their lives at home, the artists will talk about the ways they’ve continued making music during the pandemic, sharing messages of hope and connection with Trinity’s global community.
By way of an upbeat to the main event, “Messiah Week” provides opportunities to revisit highlights of some of Trinity’s other past performances of the oratorio. Viewers can stream a series of solos from baritone Thomas McCargar from 2018 (Dec 8), bass Jonathan Woody’s account of “He was despised” from the same year (Dec 10), and a number of the work’s most rousing choral movements: “For unto us a child is born” from 2017 (Dec 7), “And he shall purify” from 2018 (Dec 9), and “Surely,” “And with His stripes” and “All we like sheep” from the 2016 performance.
The Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto will make his international conducting debut next week in London with the Philharmonia.
Why on earth? Is the world short of Finnish conductors?
Lyric Opera of Chicago has been using the shutdown for an internal makeover, the first in quarter of a century.
It is promising ‘slightly larger new seats throughout, a staggered configuration and widened aisles to improve sightlines, accessibility and audience comfort’.
Capacity will be cut from 3,563 to 3,276.
More here.
Every oper orchestra depends on a pool of regular deputies for their players. How are they getting on in Covid?
This is a message from the Covent Garden musicians.
The head of admin at Jutland Opera/Danish National Opera, Benedicte Christiansen, has resigned over what she says is a ‘toxic environment’ of sexual predators and power abuse.
Ms Christiansen, who teaches at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, complained of unwanted touching, high burnout levels and prejudice in promotions and other work practices.
More here.
Georgian musicians are in mourning for Giorgi Beridze, professor of oboe at the Tbilisi Conservatoire whose students occupy seats in major European orchestras.
The professor, known as Gogi, was much beloved.
His wife died one day before him, also of Covid-19.
The Swiss conductor Andreas Reize will be the next Thomaskantor in Leipzig, it was announced this morning.
Reize, 45, succeeds Gotthold Schwarz, 67, who will retire next summer.
Reize leads the Cantus Firmus choir and period-instrument orchestra and is music director of the Waldegg Opera. He is also director of the Gabrielichor Bern and choir director of the Zurich Bach Choir.
The opera singer Hugh Beresford has died in his adopted city at the age of 94.
Beresford won the Richard Tauber Prize as a baritone in 1951 and decided to continue his studies in Austria. He made his debut in Linz in 1953 as Wolfram in Tannhäuser and in 1960 became a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1970 he transitioned to become a tenor, singing the role of Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio. That same year, he made his Bayreuth debut as Tannhäuser.
The long-serving Arsenal manager appeared on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs.
Two of his eight tracks were about losers.
Full list here.
The Orchestra and Choir of the Community of Madrid has published an open tender for the position of chief conductor, as required by law.
You have six days to apply… sharting now.
Click here.
The orchestra is turning inwards during lockdown:
On Sunday 6 December the Concertgebouworkest will be streaming solely post-war music from the Netherlands. The concert streams themed Play Dutch with Me will appear on www.concertgebouworkest.nl and the Facebook and YouTube pages of the orchestra.
At 5 p.m. CET Kees van Baaren’s Septet will be streamed, as performed by musicians of the Concertgebouworkest.
At 8.30 p.m. CET the orchestra will be streaming a concert under the direction of Dutch conductor Antony Hermus, with the world premieres of newly commissioned works by young composers Celia Swart and Bram Kortekaas and works by Louis Andriessen and Tristan Keuris. Soprano Katrien Baerts, harpist Remy van Kesteren and percussionist Dominique Vleeshouwers join the orchestra as soloists.
On the website and the YouTube channel of the Conservatorium van a collaboration concert will be streamed at 3 p.m. CET, with Kees van Baarens Septet by musicians of the Concertgebouworkest and works by other Dutch composers performed by students of the conservatoires of Amsterdam and The Hague.
