Chiaroscuro: Canticles and Cries
Music of Berio, Zelenka, Gibbons, and the second US performance of Canticle in the Sun by Sofia Gubaidulina
SIMON CARRINGTON, conductor
with Hannah Collins, cello; Ji Hye Jung and Michael Zell, percussion; Alexander Rabin, celeste; Yale Collegium Players, Robert Mealy director; Yale Consort of Viols, and the Yale Voxtet led by James Taylor
Sprague Memorial Hall
470 College Street, New Haven
Yale Schola Cantorum, the University’s acclaimed chamber choir directed by Simon Carrington, will continue the Chiaroscuro theme for the fourth year with Canticles and Cries. The concert will take place at 8 pm on Saturday, October 27 in Sprague Memorial Hall in New Haven (470 College St.)
The Chiaroscuro program contrasts the light and shade of music spanning four centuries. It begins with two strikingly different settings of the ”cries” of London street sellers. The first is by the Elizabethan composer Orlando Gibbons for voices and viol consort and traces two days in sixteenth-century London street life from morning till evening. The second of the ”cries” was commissioned by The Kings’s Singers in 1974 from the Italian composer Luciano Berio, who subsequently reworked the piece into this version for the eight voices of the Swingle Singers.
The two Canticles are a colorful and harmonically adventurous baroque Magnificat by the Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka for soloists, choir, and chamber orchestra; and a setting of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun by the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. The latter piece, for solo cello, percussion, and chamber choir, was composed ten years ago to mark the 70th birthday of the late, great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and will feature School of Music cellist Hannah Collins and members of the Yale Percussion Group.
The Chiaroscuro concert is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. More information is available at 203/432-5062