This concert also will be presented on Sunday, April 15 at 4:00 pm at Yale University's Woolsey Hall in New Haven. The all-Bruckner program, featuring the Yale Bruckner Choir directed by Richard Gard and organist Ezequiel Menéndez, will include Austrian composer Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor and three miniatures for chorus and organ: Libera me, Iam lucis orto sidere and Tota pulchra es. Tickets for these concerts are currently on sale.
The April 10th and 11th concerts mark the first-ever Masterworks Series concerts in the Cathedral and outside of The Bushnell. Hartford's Cathedral of Saint Joseph makes an appropriate setting for Bruckner's music, both spiritually and acoustically. "The music of Anton Bruckner is unique in the history of the art," writes HSO Program Annotator Richard E. Rodda. "Bruckner, scion of generations of Catholic peasants, passed most of his life in a sort of ceaseless religious ecstasy and fervent humility that held him aloof from the exigencies of everyday life." "¦ "Bruckner's early works were mostly service music, plainly intended to praise God.
When he turned to orchestral music later in life - his First Symphony did not appear until he was 42 - the intent and philosophy of his sacred compositions were transferred into his newly adopted genre. The music created by such a visionary as Bruckner needs special care from the listener. His symphonies have been called 'cathedrals in sound,' and the phrase is appropriate both for the mood that they convey and for their implication of grandeur."Â
The 2006-2007 Season is sponsored by RBC Dain Rauscher. The Masterworks Series is presented by MetLife Foundation. -- www.hartfordsymphony.org
Posted March 2nd, 2007 by ruzik_tuzik
