Program Notes
Media Room
September 2, 2014
Mozart and Haydn Program Notes
2014-15 Season
After almost thirty years as Kapellmeister to the court of Esterháza, Joseph Haydn was let go in 1790 becoming a very successful freelance composer. The Esterházys awarded him a pension, allowing for a comfortable retirement, and stipulated that Haydn’s one remaining task be to compose and direct a new mass once a year to honour the name-day of Princess Marie Esterházy. The last six masses by Haydn were all for this purpose, the most famous being the so-called “Lord Nelson” Mass.
April 18, 2014
Sacred Music for a Sacred Space 2014 Program Notes
2013-14 Season
Program notes for Toronto Mendelssohn Choir concert on April 18, 2014 – Sacred Music for a Sacred Space – at St. Paul’s Basilica. Notes by music reviewer and lecturer Rick Phillips.
March 26, 2014
Bach B Minor Mass Program Notes
2013-14 Season
Program notes for Toronto Mendelssohn Choir concert on Mar 26, 2014 – Mass in B Minor – at Koerner Hall, TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning. Notes by music reviewer and lecturer Rick Phillips.
November 20, 2013
Britten at 100 Program Notes
2013-14 Season
Program notes for Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Nov 20, 2013 concert – Britten at 100 – at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. Notes written by music broadcaster Rick Phillips.
May 15, 2013
Beethoven: Missa Solemnis Program Notes
2012-13 Season
When you come right down to it, Beethoven didn’t compose a lot of choral music. There are three early works – the under-rated Mass in C, the rarely-performed oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives and the Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 80. Of course, there are choruses in the opera Fidelio before his last two choral masterpieces – the finale to the Symphony No. 9, and the great Missa Solemnis.
March 29, 2013
Sacred Music for a Sacred Space 2013 Program Notes
2012-13 Season
Except for a couple of years at the Dresden Court, Antonio Lotti (c.1647-1740) spent his career in Venice, working his way up from singer to organist to maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s Basilica. Lotti was an innovative composer of almost thirty operas, but in his sacred music he tended to rely on the great traditions of Renaissance polyphony. J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel and Felix Mendelssohn all knew and admired his music. Today he is known almost exclusively for his many settings of the Crucifixus text from the Credo of the mass. Why he wrote so many has remained a mystery but it may have been for insertion into mass settings by other composers.
February 9, 2013
Rossini: Petite Messe Solennelle Program Notes
2012-13 Season
During the decades of the early 19th century, Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) dominated the world of Italian opera in both the comic and serious categories. The Barber of Seville, Tancredi, Semiramide, Cinderella, The Italian Girl in Algiers, The Silken Ladder, The Thieving Magpie and William Tell are all still staged today.
November 14, 2012
Carmina Burana Program Notes
2012-13 Season
The British composer Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) has composed in a variety of fields, including film scores, orchestral and chamber music and choral music, but he’s maybe best known for his operas and opera adaptations. As well as The Adventures of Pinocchio and Mansfield Park, based on the novel by Jane Austen, Dove has also created a two-evening chamber adaptation of The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner.
May 23, 2012
Belshazzar’s Feast Program Notes
2011-12 Season
The Gloria by Francis Poulenc (1899 -1963) was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Music Foundation and first performed in 1961 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch. It was dedicated to the memory of Nathalie and Serge Koussevitsky, a former Music Director of the BSO. To many, the work seemed irreverent – this ancient sacred text from the Mass being treated frivolously with wit and humour. But what they failed to catch was Poulenc’s interpretation of liturgical joy as a swirl of musical colour and dancing rhythms.