The Cantilena Chamber Choir will present a concert, "Revolutionary Music"
LENOX, Mass. — The Cantilena Chamber Choir will present a concert,.jpg)
"Revolutionary Music" on Saturday, May 16, at 6 p.m. The performance at Trinity Church features selections from the rarely heard Ten Poems by Revolutionary Poets for a cappella choir by Dmitri Shostakovich. Also on the program will be sacred choral music by Georgy Sviridov written at a time when the composition and performance of sacred music was banned in the Soviet Union. Revolutionary Music from other eras also will be performed, including the 16th century Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis, and early twentieth-century sacred music by Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti.
The Ten Poems have rarely been performed because of their political content. They were considered extremely pro-Stalinist as they were written to comply with the 1948 requirement that “all musical creativity conform once and for all to the dictates of Marxist-Leninist doctrine.”
Until recently, Russian musicians felt that performances of this music would help to restore Stalin’s reputation. As conductor Valery Gergiev states in a recent article on the subject of performances of political music by Shostakovich and Prokofiev, "we perform it today because I think we are not here to learn more about Stalin. We are here to learn more about Prokofiev.”
The central work of the Ten Poems is January 9, 1905, marking the date of one of the key events that sparked the Bolshevik Revolution. On what is now known as “Bloody Sunday,” Russian peasants came to the plaza in front of the Tsar’s winter palace in St. Petersburg to petition him for more food and freedom from his overbearing ministers. They stood in the cold waiting for a response and were met not by the Tsar, but by armed guards who opened fire on them. Shostakovich sets a chilling version of the story. The choral work, considered a preliminary study for the second movement of the Eleventh Symphony, uses a poem by Alexander Kots to convey the event with the chorus members singing the story as if they are the peasants telling it in the first person.
Now in its fifth season, the Cantilena Chamber Choir is the Berkshire region's leading a cappella group. It is comprised of 24 singers who possess vocal training, good sight-reading skills, and considerable choral experience. Last season it collaborated with the New England Baroque Soloists for two concerts and presented a special performance of Ron Perera’s Golden Door as a benefit for the Berkshire Immigrant Center. Past season highlights include concerts with Aston Magna, the Empire Brass at the Colonial Theatre, a concert of works by Berkshire composers, and a special benefit for the Lenox Library with Shakespeare and Company’s Annette Miller. The Choir is in residence at Trinity Church in Lenox, and has been heard on a special WMHT Christmas Eve 2008 radio broadcast of Lessons and Carols recorded at the church.
The Cantilena Chamber Choir is under the artistic direction of Andrea Goodman who is also the Director of the Northern Berkshire Chorale in Williamstown and the Saratoga Choral Festival, an annual summer concert series for chorus and orchestra in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
All tickets are $15 and are available at the door or in advance by email from satbchoir@yahoo.com. Phone: 518-791-0185. Trinity Church is located at 88 Walker Street in Lenox. Those interested in more information can visit www.cantilenachoir.org.
