The New York Choral Society (NYCHORAL), under the baton of music director David Hayes, will appear at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium (881 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019) with Where Even the Sea Sings, Sunday afternoon, February 11, 2018, at 3 pm. This program juxtaposes three composers of very different backgrounds and styles, inspired by a shared commonality in theme: the grandeur of the “sea”. Each composer responds to this theme in a different way, allowing the audience to experience a deep, personal, journey of the soul. It includes Sir Charles Stanford’s Songs of the Fleet, Op. 117, featuring baritone Jarrett Ott and the East Coast premiere of American composer Frank Ticheli’s Symphony No. 3 “The Shore.” Program information follows:
STANFORD, Charles Villiers Songs of the Fleet, Op. 117
TICHELI, Frank Symphony No. 3, “The Shore” (East Coast Premiere)
MENDELSSOHN, Felix Hebrides Overture
Tickets will be available for purchase through the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 57th St and 7th Ave, through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, and at https://www.carnegiehall.org/.
In partnership with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, NYCHORAL will host a panel discussion on Frank Ticheli’s The Shore. This event will be held on Wednesday Evening, February 7, 2018, at 6 PM at the Bruno Walter Auditorium. NYCHORAL’s Music Director David Hayes and Frank Ticheli will explore the composer’s inspiration in creating this contemporary choral masterwork. This event, which is free and open to the public, will also be broadcast on Facebook Live.
This concert continues NYCHORAL’s commitment to fostering a greater appreciation of choral music and the work of choral composers to the New York community by providing musicologists, historians, and the general public access to insights about choral music and this important historical archive.
Frank Ticheli’s Symphony No. 3, “The Shore” was commissioned by the Pacific Chorale and based on poems by the composer’s colleague, poet David St. John. The poems inspire a rich palette of musical moods evoked by the sea: playfulness, awe, terror, beauty, mystery, calmness, and tranquility. Following the tremendous worldwide success of Frank Ticheli’s “There Will Be Rest,” The Shore is a luminous and evocative four-movement work.
Based on poems by young barrister and poet Henry Newbolt’s wildly popular first volume of poetry, entitled Admirals All, Charles Stanford’s Songs of the Fleet is inspired by Britain’s naval past. Stanford deploys all his harmonic inventiveness in depicting the fleet ‘waking’ with the sunrise, ready to set sail, and the ships motionless again at dusk. The strength, beauty, and character of Stanford’s folk-like melodies invoke the bustling and often grueling nature of life at sea.
Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture was inspired by the composer’s visit to the Hebrides islands off the west coast of Scotland. First performed in 1830, the piece was revised many times by its composer and premiered (as Overture to the Isles of Fingal) in London in 1832. Mendelssohn loved Scotland, and he was stimulated by its sights and sounds. While on a ferry voyage in western Scotland, Mendelssohn was so struck by the misty scene and the crashing waves that a melody came into his mind, a melody with all the surge and power of the sea itself. In an exuberant letter, he described the experience to his sister Fanny, and, wishing to convey to her how deeply he was moved, he wrote down for her a few bars of the melody that he later used at the beginning of his overture.
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