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2019-2020 CONCERT SEASON

Our 35th year! Seven concerts featuring Artistic Director and Conductor Dwayne Milburn, our wonderful Chamber Orchestra and outstanding guest artists.

All single tickets are $35 each. Subscription prices are significantly discounted. After online payment is complete, tickets are held at Will Call. You may also download a PDF order form to pay by check.

All concerts are Friday at 8:00 pm (except June)

COMING UP NEXT

Annual Holiday Concert

December 6 at 8pm
Annual Holiday Concert – A Baroque Christmas
The Choir and Soloists of St. Matthew’s Parish
The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s

• BOYCE: Symphony No. 4
• PERGOLESI: Magnificat
• VIVALDI: Gloria
• HANDEL: “Hallelujah” Chorus – Audience Sing-Along
  

The Chamber Orchestra and Choir join forces to present a joyful start to the holiday season. William Boyce was one of the most respected English composers in his day and his effervescent Symphony No. 4 opens the concert. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi produced many influential masterworks during his short life, including the Magnificat, which features the Soloists of St. Matthew’s Parish.

The Choir of St. Matthew’s Parish takes the stage to perform the perennial holiday favorite, Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria, followed by our traditional audience sing-along of the Hallelujah Chorus, from Handel’s Messiah.

Tickets purchased online are held at Will Call beginning at 7pm on the night of the concert

Boulevard Saint-Germain

January 31 at 8pm
A Night on the Boulevard Saint-Germain
The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s

• DEBUSSY: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (chamber orchestra version)
• FRANCAIX: Six Preludes
• RAVEL: Three Poems by Stéphane Mallarmé
• BIZET: Symphony in C

Spend a night with us on Paris’s Boulevard Saint-Germain and enjoy the music of some of the finest French composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The sumptuous harmonies of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Ravel’s Three Poems by Stéphane Mallarmé are matched with the vibrant energy of Six Preludes by the always cosmopolitan and charming Jean Françaix.

George Bizet’s delightful Symphony in C is a youthful work, composed when he was just seventeen and a student at the Paris Conservatory. Because Bizet was consumed with opera after graduating, the work lay dormant until its premiere in Basel in 1935 when it was hailed as a masterpiece.

Tickets purchased online are held at Will Call beginning at 7pm on the night of the concert

Petronel Malan

March 13 at 8pm
Petronel Malan in Recital

South African-born pianist Petronel Malan, who brought the house down with her October 2018 performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, returns for a solo recital commemorating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.

Known for her “uniquely captivating style,” and described by New York reviewer Harris Goldsmith as “formidable…dizzying…magical,” Malan, a multiple Grammy nominee, will also present rarely heard masterpieces by American composer Florence Price, and music by Johannes Brahms.

Tickets purchased online are held at Will Call beginning at 7pm on the night of the concert

Jens Lindemann

April 24 at 8pm
Classical Jazz
The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s
Jens Lindemann, trumpet
Ethan Helm and Owen Broder, saxophone

• IVES: Ragtime Dances
• MILHAUD: The Creation of the World
• BROUGHTON: Saloon Music for Trumpet and Pit Orchestra
• HELM: Commissioned work for two saxophones and chamber ensemble

A uniquely American art form, jazz continues to influence world music. Charles Ives’ jaunty Ragtime Dances explore the power of jazz to move the body, while Darius Milhaud’s The Creation of the World invokes jazz idioms to move the spirit.

Canadian Jens Lindemann, one of the greatest trumpet virtuosos of our era, joins us in Bruce Broughton’s Saloon Music for Trumpet and Pit Orchestra, a work that moves jazz from the nightclubs to the concert stage. New York jazz saxophonist duo Ethan Helm and Owen Broder join us for the world premiere of a new work commissioned for the Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s.

Tickets purchased online are held at Will Call beginning at 7pm on the night of the concert

Igor Stravinsky, William Grant Still, Joseph Haydn

June 5 at 8pm
Still, Stravinsky, Haydn
The Choir of St. Matthew’s Parish
The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s

• STILL: Out of the Silence
• STRAVINSKY: Dumbarton Oaks
• HAYDN: Lord Nelson Mass

Our season closes with Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass. Composed during the height of the Napoleonic wars, the premiere occurred as news of England’s Admiral Lord Nelson’s victory at Aboukar reached Austria.

The coincidence of these events, as well as Haydn’s admiration for Nelson, prompted the work’s familiar nickname.

Dumbarton Oaks, Stravinsky’s homage to Bach’s Brandenburg concertos, and William Grant Still’s elegant essay Out of the Silence round out the program.

Tickets purchased online are held at Will Call beginning at 7pm on the night of the concert

PAST EVENTS

Movses Pogossian

October 4 at 8pm
Pogossian plays Bruch
Movses Pogossian, violin
The Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew’s

• BRUCH: Violin Concerto in G minor
• BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 8
• CHERUBINI: Overture to Faniska

Armenian-born Movses Pogossian took the violin world by storm winning the Tchaikovsky International Competition at the age of 20 and becoming the youngest-ever First Prize winner of the 1985 USSR National Violin Competition.

Following his American debut at Symphony Hall, Boston, in 1990, Richard Dyer wrote, “There is freedom in his playing, but also taste and discipline. It was a fiery…and highly musical performance” (The Boston Globe). Now a faculty member at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Pogossian will perform the quintessentially romantic Concerto in G minor by Max Bruch, a favorite violin showpiece since its premiere in 1866.

Luigi Cherubini, a contemporary of Beethoven and equally as famous in his day, wrote the opera Faniska after attending a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio in Vienna. Like Fidelio, Faniska is a “rescue” opera – in this case with a Polish connection. Although the opera and its vivacious overture were praised by Haydn and Beethoven, only the overture remains in the standard repertoire.

November 1 at 8pm
VOCES8 — Live in Concert

Voces8, the astonishing British vocal ensemble, is proud to inspire people through music and share the joy of singing. Touring globally, the group performs an extensive repertory both in its a cappella concerts and in collaborations with leading orchestras. Versatility and a celebration of diverse ­musical expression are central to the ensemble’s performance and education ethos.

“The singing of VOCES8 is impeccable in its quality of tone and balance. They bring a new dimension to the word ‘ensemble’ with meticulous timing and tuning.” —Gramophone.

This concert by Voces8 is presented as the 2019-2020 installment of the
Music Guild’s new Choral Arts Initiative.

November 1
SOLD OUT