Carl Orff: Carmina Burana
Sunday, January 25, 2015, 3pm at the Rogers Center for the Arts
Join us as we celebrate our 85th season with Carl Orff’s dramatic Carmina Burana! Even if you don’t recognize the title, you have almost surely heard Carmina Burana due to its popularity as background music in television advertisements and movies. The piece is based on a set of provocative, medieval texts that were discovered in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. Over a century later, German composer Carl Orff selected twenty-four of the poems, which he set to music. These poems are at times tender, bawdy, amorous, irreverent, and satirical. Orff’s musical setting of the poems features memorable melodies and colorful harmonies combined with heavy percussion to create music with a primal, visceral character. The performance also features young singers from the Andover Middle School Chamber Choir, Katie Simko, director. With two pianos, five percussionists and soloists.
Joseph Haydn: Mass in Time of War
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Five Mystical Songs
Sunday, April 26, 2015, 3pm at the Rogers Center for the Arts
Haydn’s Mass in Time of War is the tenth and perhaps most popular of his fourteen mass settings. At the time of its writing in 1796, Austrian composer Joseph Haydn was at the peak of his musical creativity and had established himself as one of Europe’s premier composers. Five Mystical Songs by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, is based on poems by the seventeenth-century Anglican priest and metaphysical poet George Herbert. Completed in 1911, the piece highlights Vaughan Williams’ gift for melody and lush, colorful orchestration. Director Michael Driscoll, notes, “The brilliance of Haydn’s Missa and the sheer beauty of the Vaughan Williams Songs make these pieces favorites for audience and singers alike.” With full orchestra and soloists.
