The Franco-American Heritage Center will resound with Christmas carols and the sounds of Vivaldi.
Franco center will resound with Christmas carols, music of Vivaldi.
LEWISTON – The Androscoggin Chorale and Maine Chamber Ensemble will ring in the holiday season with performances in Portland and Lewiston Dec. 6 and 7.
The program blends traditional carols, a popular Vivaldi oratorio and less familiar works.
An 18th-century Italian, Antonio Vivaldi is most widely recognized for his “Four Seasons” and numerous instrumental concertos. His popular setting of the “Gloria” (“Glory to God on high and on Earth peace to men of good will”) is his best known choral work. In a dozen separate movements for chorus and soloists with strings, trumpet, and oboe, Vivaldi conveys praise and adoration, longings for peace, darkness and anxiety, and faith and affirmation.
Besides the “Gloria,” the chorale and ensemble also will perform Vivaldi’s less known but equally stirring “Magnificat” (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”), the canticle of Mary at receiving the news that she would carry the child Jesus. The tone is more solemn, humble, dramatic and peaceful, but, like the “Gloria,” it is suffused with the joy of hope and faith.
About seven years ago, New York composer Bruce Saylor was asked by opera superstar Jessye Norman to arrange some favorite Christmas songs for soprano and chorus for a special concert at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. “Silent Night,” “Lo, How a Rose” and a spiritual, “A Balm in Gilead,” are truly miraculous arrangements, says a spokesman for the Maine Music Society.
These will be sung by Androscoggin Chorale’s Susan Strickland, who appeared as soprano soloist in last season’s “Messiah.” Saylor also arranged “A Christmas Garland” for chorus, joining two popular carols, “Ding-dong! Merrily on High” and “Deck the Halls” with the lesser-known “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” to create a delightful display of choral color.
This year, the musical world is celebrating the 80th birthday of American composer Ned Rorem. Through the years of serial and atonal explorations of musical art by many composers, Rorem continued to work with tonality and the lyric line. He turned these skills to the hymn text, “Shout the Glad Tidings,” producing a brief Christmas choral song that bubbles with rhythmic joy.
To close this holiday program, the Androscoggin Chorale will sing four traditional carols, inviting the audience to participate directly in the spirit and pleasure of song.
The concerts will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, in John Ford Auditorium at Portland High School and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, in the newly refurbished concert hall of the Franco-American Heritage Center, 51 Westminster St., Lewiston. This is the first concert by the chorale and ensemble in that new space, the first dedicated concert hall in Lewiston-Auburn in years that is not attached to an educational institution.
Advance tickets: $15 for adults, $14 for seniors; $17.50 at the door; students half price; children 12 and under free if with an adult. Tickets available at Lewiston and Auburn Hannaford and Shaw’s supermarkets, Mr. Paperback and Mainely Drumz Music in Lewiston, and at MacBeans Music in Brunswick.
FMI: call 782-1403 or go to www.mainemusicsociety.org.
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