TMC’s popular annual Sacred Music concerts are intended to provide a moment of calm for patrons with a program of contemplative a cappella music. For 2019, David Fallis has created a program of 20th century composers with the first half featuring composers from France and Switzerland, while the second half features composers from Eastern Europe and Russia.
David opens the concert with Olivier Messaien’s O sacrum convivium – a composition to help patrons step out of time. In his program notes, David remarks that this motet is “a perfect example of Messiaen’s preoccupation with the suspension of the perception of time in music by the use of extremely slow tempos and subtle changes in length of notes, all designed to bring us closer to something outside of time, eternal.” Read David Fallis’ program notes here. The first half also includes Poulenc’s Salve Regina and Martin’s Mass for Double Choir, all performed by the 70-member Mendelssohn Singers.
The second half of music of the Eastern Orthodox Church will be sung by the full TMC. The program will conclude with a work near and dear to the Choir – Healey Willan’s An Apostrophe to the Heavenly Hosts, composed for the Choir in 1921. It is a setting of words taken from eastern liturgies and shows the profound influence eastern orthodox music had on Willan. David selected this work in honour of the TMC’s 125– year heritage (the Choir’s 125th anniversary will be celebrated with a major concert in the Fall.)
This year the concert moves to a new venue, St. Anne’s Anglican Church. St. Anne’s was designated a national and provincial historic site because of the murals painted by three members of Canada’s iconic Group of Seven – J.E.H. Macdonald, Frederick Varley, and Franklin Carmichael. We invite our patrons to discover this Toronto treasure at this concert.
The concert takes place Wednesday, April 17 and Good Friday, April 19 at 7:30 pm. Tickets (with seat selection) are $35, $55 and $60, with $20 VoxTix available for patrons 30 years old and under. Tickets are available online or by calling RCM Tickets at 416-408-0208.
Sacred Music for a Sacred Space
April 17 and April 19, 2019 at 7:30 pm
St. Anne’s Anglican Church, 270 Gladstone Ave.
David Fallis, conductor
Ezra Burke, associate conductor
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir
O sacrum convivium – Olivier Messiaen
Salve Regina – Francis Poulenc
Mass for double choir – Frank Martin
Jesus and the Traders – Zoltán Kodály
Cherubic Hymn – Sergei Rachmaninoff
Song of Cherubim – Krzysztof Penderecki
Complete this work which I began – Alfred Schnittke
An Apostrophe to the Heavenly Hosts – Healey Willan
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