Winter Choral Concert Beethoven's Choral Fantasy

Winter Choral Concert
Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy”    
Tuesday, March 22, 2016                                                                
Wilson Hall/Concert Hall
8:00 p.m.

 Tickets are free, but required.  Call the Lenfest Box Office at 458-8000 for tickets.

Join the combined forces of the Cantatrici, the Men’s Glee Club, the University Singers, and the Oratorio Orchestra as they present the Winter Choral Concert on March 22 at 8 p.m. in Wilson Concert Hall. Featuring Jonathan Chapman Cook as the piano soloist in Beethoven’s triumphant Fantasie Opus 80, commonly known as the “Choral Fantasy,” joins conductor Shane M. Lynch in a musical journey featuring choral soundscapes, music inspired by Shakespeare, and much more.
The opening half of the concert will feature the Men’s Glee Club and Cantatrici performing a wide variety of music. The men will open the program with music ‘for those in a questionable state,’ with classics like What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor and In Taberna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The women of Cantatrici will then perform music inspired by Shakespeare, including the world premiere of senior music major Rachel Hodge’s composition set to a Shakespearian text.  The first half will close with choral music inspired by nature, including Ola Gjeilo’s wonderful Tundra Eric Whitacre’s powerful Cloudburst.

After an intermission to reset the stage, Dr. Lynch will take the podium for Choral Fantasy. This large, single movement work is basically Beethoven experimenting with adding voices to a piano concerto, a process of adding singers to instrumental genres he would later feature prominently in the fourth movement of the 9th Symphony, the famous Ode to Joy. This earlier work features the same process on a smaller scale, with hints of what would become the thematic material at the end of the 9th. Featuring Cook extensively on the challenging piano solo, the Oratorio Orchestra, combined choirs, and featured student vocal soloists will come together to finish off the evening with the great rush only Beethoven can provide.

Tickets are free, but required.
Call the Lenfest Box Office at 458-8000 for tickets.