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Choral music fans will have a unique opportunity
to hear two beautiful and challenging works back to back on Sunday,
February 4.
The Campbell Collegiate Chamber Choir and the
University of Regina Chamber Singers will present Bach's Magnificat
and Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen at 7:30 p.m. at Knox
Metropolitan United Church, under the direction of Kathryn Laurin and
accompanied by a select orchestra.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students, and
can be purchased from any choir member, at Knox Metropolitan United
Church, or at the door.
The concert came about when Hart Godden, director of
the Campbell choir, asked Kathryn, director of the University Chamber
Singers, if she'd be interested in having the Chamber Singers join the
Campbell group in performing Bach's Magnificat.
She thought that was a wonderful idea and countered
with a suggestion that the Campbell choir join the Chamber Singers in
performing Lux Aeterna.
"I have a very special group," Hart said, explaining
why he approached the Chamber Singers in the first place. "We did the
first movement (of the Magnificat) last year. The kids all loved
the piece."
He wanted to perform the whole thing, but felt that
he needed more than the 34 voices in his choir to do the piece justice.
Once two choirs were involved, totaling 74 voices, the two directors
realized they could perform the piece with full orchestra. The result
promises to be spectacular. "This is a piece singers love to sing," Hart
says.
Kathryn agrees, but notes that it's not easy. "It
requires virtuosic singing that not every group can do. It's a very
challenging piece for any singer. It has a lot of fast passages, and must
be sung very rhythmically and precisely. To hear a good performance live
is a treat."
The Magnificat was written by J. S. Bach for
the evening services at the Church of St. Thomas in Lepzig on Christmas
Day, 1723. (One wonders if the people of Leipzig who attended services at
that church regularly realized just how lucky they were to have Bach as
their resident composer!) It's now recognized as one of the greatest
choral pieces ever written. As Hart says, "It's exciting, uplifting, so
joyful. Most choral conductors can't resist the piece."
The other piece on the program, Lux Aeterna,
by Morten Lauridsen, composer-in-residence at the University of Southern
California, is also exciting, beautiful, challenging--and very new, having
been premiered in 1997 by the Los Angeles Master Chorale under the
direction of Paul Salamunovich.
In fact, the piece is so new that Kathryn believes
that the Regina performance is quite likely the Canadian premiere.
"This is a piece I've been wanting to do for the
last two years," she says. She'd decided to do it with the Chamber Singers
this year, but leaped at the opportunity to do it with the larger choir
and orchestra.
Combining a high school choir with a choir made up
not only of college-aged students but adult singers from the community
might seem problematic, but the two choirs melded almost at once, Hart
says. They first came together at a rehearsal at the University, where his
singers simply "walked in and started to sing."
The choirs sound "really good together," Kathryn
agrees.
In addition to the musical pleasure the concert
promises to bring to everyone who hears it, Hart says, this concert is
important because it builds community, joining high school students,
university students and adults from the community--not to mention 21 of
the city's finest professional orchestral players--into a single entity to
perform some of the greatest music ever written.
