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Season of Music: Choral Arts Society, Racine Symphony Orchestra present their new seasons
By LEE B. ROBERTS
Journal Times
As harvest season rolls into town it brings with it a new crop of symphonic and choral music. Next weekend, the Racine Symphony Orchestra will open its season with a concert featuring the best of Beethoven and Brahms at Memorial Hall. It follows last weekend’s season opener for the Choral Arts Society, a musical version of the children’s story book, “Julius, the Baby of the World,” which filled Memorial Hall with sight and sound. And those are just the beginning of the eight months of musical entertainment yet to come from these two performing groups.
While the symphony and the chorus are two separate organizations, each with their own season of performances, together they offer our community a full range of musical experiences throughout the year. At least once each season they also combine their talents to present a shared evening of music, as they will do in March of 2008 at Holy Communion Lutheran Church.
But first, let’s talk about what is still to come in 2007.
On Oct. 26, Andrew Massey will kick off his second season as music director of the Racine Symphony Orchestra with a concert that he says binds light and dark together.
The first half of the program features two masterpieces — the “Classical Symphony” of Prokofiev, which the conductor described as a “wonderfully frothy confection,” and a suite of English folk tunes by Benjamin Britten.
“This is the very last orchestral composition that Britten composed before he died in the 1970s,” Massey said. “He had heart surgery that had not gone well and knew that his days were numbered. But you’d never guess that in the first few movements, which are brilliant displays of what the various sections of the orchestra can do. The last movement, however, with the English horn sadly playing the song ‘Lord Melbourne,’ gradually fades away without quite dying. It is exquisitely beautiful.”
‘Tis the season
The RSO’s next offering will be its Holiday Pops concert on Dec. 7, followed by two Chamber Concerts in February and March (with the CAS), and a Season Climax program in May that will include a performance of Massey’s “Early Mourning,” a piece he wrote as a memorial to Sept. 11. Along the way, audiences will be treated to the sounds of Schubert, Delius, Mozart, Kodaly, Brahms and more in what Massey says he hopes will be a season with some musical “heft” to it.
“I don’t mean to make (the concerts) more serious or deep, though I have no desire to avoid that,” he said. “I just want to make sure that they are substantial — that every piece we play is a full-protein meal of music that will be rewarding, fascinating and satisfying for both those in the audience who already know them well, and for those encountering them for the first time.”
Nancy DeKraay, president of the RSO’s Board of Directors, said that the board was very happy with Massey’s first season with the symphony and is looking forward to the coming season.
“As a composer and a conductor, he brings a different view point to the orchestra,” she said. “The musicians have also enjoyed working with him very much.”
Sing out!
The Choral Arts Society will also ring in the holidays with a musical celebration when it presents its annual Lessons and Carols program on Dec. 2. This holiday tradition will have a somewhat different focus this year with more secular and multi-cultural music, as well as multi-media presentations, says James Schatzman, artistic director of the CAS.
“We are doing a wonderful piece from Glenn Burleigh’s Kwanzaa suite, which follows the theme of ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ and we’ll also be singing a Native American carol that I think will really speak to people,” Schatzman said.
The program will also include holiday favorites such as Fred Waring’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” And, the chorus is expecting a “special guest” to be on hand to visit with children, the director said.
“We’ve also invited the children’s choir from Schulte Elementary School to come sing with us,” he said. “It is our first time collaborating with them and we are really excited about that.”
Schatzman is also excited about the chorus’ winter/spring concerts, both of which will be collaborations with orchestras. The first, with the RSO on March 14, will feature the devotional masterpiece of Franz Schubert’s “Mass in G Major.” The chorus will also perform a surprise encore with the symphony that the conductor says is bound to “make a really big splash.”
The CAS’s history of successful orchestral collaborations led Schatzman to develop the chorus’ final program of the season, which they will perform with the University of Wisconsin-Parkside Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Alvaro Garcia. Called “Viva Espana,” this concert will be performed at two different venues on May 4 and 10, and will feature works written by Spanish speaking composers from Europe and Mexico.
One of it’s highlights will be the “Polychoral Mass in D Major,” written by Ignacio De Jerusalem in 1750.
“This is a glorious piece, reminiscent of the music of great European masters such as Mozart and Salieri,” said Schatzman. “It is an uplifting, cheerful mass. A absolute jewel.”
In keeping with their tradition of community outreach, he and the chorus are also planning to extend this concert’s focus on Latin music into outreach work with students at the San Juan Diego Middle School.
“We want to give the students the opportunity to learn about the music of different Latin cultures and how it relates to European music,” Schatzman said.
Their work with the middle school is just one example of the CAS’s efforts to reach out to the community and connect with people of all ages and ethnicities through their music, he said.
“We want to reach across more boundaries and engage more of people’s senses.”
The New Seasons
Racine Symphony Orchestra
Oct. 26 ‑ October Concert, 7:30 p.m. at Memorial Hall, 72 7th St. Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony”; Britten’s “Suite on English Folk Tunes”; Brahms’ “First Symphony,” and more on the program.
Dec. 7 ‑ Holiday Pops, 7 p.m. at Festival Hall, 5 5th St. Traditional and contemporary holiday favorites will be featured and the audience will be invited to sing along.
Feb. 8 ‑ Chamber Concert No. 1, 7:30 p.m. at the DeKoven Center, 600 21st St. Mark Niehaus, principal trumpeter with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, will be the guest artist for this evening of chamber music. Featured pieces will include Schubert’s “Second Symphony” and the music of Delius.
March 14 ‑ Chamber Concert No. 2, 7:30 p.m. at Holy Communion Lutheran Church, 2000 W. 6th St. Mozart, Schubert and Kodaly will be featured in this joint concert with the Choral Arts Society.
May 16 ‑ Season Climax, 7:30 p.m. at Memorial Hall, 72 7th St. The RSO will end its season with a powerful work by Brahms and one of Liszt’s great orchestral works. An original Andrew Massey piece, “Early Mourning,” will also be featured.
Tickets to individual concerts are $20 adults, $5 students and $1 children (under 13). New Season Flex Passes, which include four tickets that can be used for any of the four classical concerts (Holiday Pops not included), are $75 adults, $15 students, and $5 children. They can be ordered on line at http://www.racinesymphony.org or by calling (262) 636-9285.
Choral Arts Society
Dec. 2 ‑ Holiday Lessons and Carols, 3 p.m. at Evangelical United Methodist Church, Main and 11th streets. This year’s holiday offering will be a multi-cultural celebration with music from a variety of nations. The Schulte Elementary School Choir, under the direction of Kathleen Berg, will join the CAS in this performance.
March 14 ‑ A Classic Collaboration, 7:30 p.m. at Holy Communion Lutheran Church, 2000 W. 6th St. The CAS joins the Racine Symphony Orchestra in a combined program. The chorus will be featured in Franz Schubert’s “Mass in G Major.”
May 4 ‑ Viva Espana, 3 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, 1100 Erie St. The University of Wisconsin-Parkside Symphony, under the direction of Alvaro Garcia, joins the CAS in this afternoon of Latin music. The program will be highlighted by the “Polychoral Mass in D Major,” written by Ignacio De Jerusalem in 1750, and will also feature the music of De Falla and Granados.
NOTE: The Viva Espana concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. on May 10 in the Communication Arts Theater at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, 900 Wood Road, Somers.
Tickets to individual concerts are $15 adults, $12 seniors and $5 students. Season tickets are $50 adults, $40 seniors and $20 students. To purchase call (262) 634-3250 or send an e-mail to info@choralartsonline.org
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