Winterlude Concert
Sunday, February 5, 2023
3:00pm
Join the Lansing Symphony Orchestra for an afternoon of rarely performed works at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
The chamber orchestra will be joined by MSU College of Music vocalists, Katy Green, Colleen Chester, Dalan Guthrie, and Ryan Fellman for J.S. Bach’s cantatas.
Program
Felix Mendelssohn: Sinfonia No. 10 in b minor
J.S. Bach: Cantata No. 106: Gottes Zeit is die all Zeit (Actus Tragicus)
J.S. Bach: Cantata No 19: Der Herr Denket an us BWV 196
(The Wedding Cantata)
Felix Mendelssohn: Sinfonia No. 7 in d minor
Tickets to the performance are free but must be reserved in advance. Reservation forms available in the Merrifield Room or by emailing stpaulsreservations20@gmail.com
This special program is made possible by
the Tom and Jean Shawver Memorial Fund
“Winterlude is a great opportunity to hear four fabulous works of music that don’t often get heard live today.
Aside from being inspired, Mendelssohn, like Mozart, was also precocious. Between the years 1821 and 1823, when the composer was in his early teens, he wrote 12 symphonies for string orchestra and they still delight and engage audiences today, 200 years later. We will play two of those string symphonies. They are often overlooked in orchestral programming, existing in the shadow of the composer’s four symphonies for full orchestra written when he was an adult.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s primary job in his life was as a church musician, and in that role, he wrote hundreds of cantatas both sacred and secular. They are among his greatest compositions, but few get heard today.
The environs of the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church are the perfect acoustical and spiritual setting for this music. It is hard to imagine that there was a time the music of a genius like Bach had fallen into relative obscurity, but while his music was still known by some, it was seldom performed after his death in 1750. Audiences were more interested in hearing the new works being composed by living composers than music of a dead composer from a previous era.
Mendelssohn was instrumental in changing that. Right at the same time Mendelssohn was writing the string symphonies, his grandmother gave him a copy of the score of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, and Mendelssohn became an immediate fan. He organized performances of Bach’s work and brought it back into the public’s awareness and interest.”
From Maestro Muffitt
More information: https://www.lansingsymphony.org/events/winterlude