Oratorio Society of New York to Open 2014-15 Season with Hadyn's THE CREATION at Carnegie Hall, 11/3

Haydn's oratorio The Creation (Die Schöpfung) depicts nothing less than the creation of the world, based on the Bible's Book of Genesis and Book of Psalms, and Milton's Paradise Lost. It is the work with which the Oratorio Society of New York (OSNY), New York's standard for grand choral performance, will open its 2014-15 season at Carnegie Hall on Monday, November 3, 2014, at 8:00 PM. OSNY Music Director Kent Tritle will conduct The Creation in its German language version, and the three soloists - representing the archangels Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael - are Susanna Phillips, soprano; Aaron Blake, tenor; and Sidney Outlaw, baritone.

Kent Tritle marks his tenth season as OSNY Music Director in 2014-15, which is the OSNY's 142nd season. (Watch a video of Tritle talking about the OSNY season.) He chose to open with The Creation because, as he says, "I've long wanted to perform it with the Oratorio Society. After all, this chorus knows Handel's Messiah intimately, and Haydn was inspired to compose The Creation in great part because of a performance he heard of Messiah with grand forces at Westminster Abbey."

While The Creation is frequently performed in English, Tritle decided to perform the work in German, as he did with Mendelssohn's Paulus three years ago. "I believe that as Haydn conceived every lyric phrase, every ornamented gesture in the arias, every color in those magical moments, he was thinking in terms of his German libretto and those vowel colors and consonant articulations," Tritle explains, "so German will be our performance language."

"Haydn's responses to the colors in the libretto are absolutely breathtaking," Tritle says, "whether he's talking about the creation of plants and flowers, or the creeping worm, or the leaping tiger." Tritle will conduct the concert from a fortepiano, which he will use to play the recitatives; this past spring he conducted the OSNY in Bach's St. Matthew Passion from the harpsichord.

Mr. Tritle refers to his tenure with the OSNY as "a decade of growth." He says, "My decade of work with the Oratorio Society of New York has been an absolute joy. A tremendous amount of growth has happened in all areas - the development of rhythmic vitality, the cultivation of high diction standards, and the evolution of a sound that is consistently warm and blended. We've done all this without losing the essential esprit de corps-in fact, as the musical bar has risen, I believe the chorus has become more engaged and stronger as a community than ever before."

OSNY 2014-15 Continues:

The Oratorio Society of New York's Carnegie Hall series continues as Tritle conducts OSNY's annual sell-out presentation of Handel's Messiah on Monday, December 22, with vocal soloists soprano Emalie Savoy, mezzo-soprano Sara Murphy, tenor Mingjie Lei, and baritone Sidney Outlaw. It ends on Tuesday, May 5, 2015, with a pairing of two 20th-century symphonic choral masterworks appropriate for spring-Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Orff's Carmina Burana, with vocal soloists soprano Jennifer Zetlan, tenor Peter Tantsits, and baritone Takaoki Onishi, and the Choristers of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Kent Tritle will conduct the Orff, and OSNY Associate Conductor David Rosenmeyer, who is also celebrating his tenth season with the OSNY, will lead the Bernstein.

In addition, Tritle has invited OSNY to perform Verdi's epic Requiem at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where he serves as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist, on Thursday, March 26, 2015, for the Cathedral's Great Music in a Great Space series. The OSNY will be joined by the Manhattan School of Music Symphonic Chorus and Symphony Orchestra; Mr. Tritle is the School's Director of Choral Activities. The Requiem soloists will be soprano Lori Guilbeau, mezzo-soprano Sara Murphy; tenor Alex Richardson, and bass Matthew Anchel.

Kent Tritle, one of America's leading choral conductors, is in his tenth season as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of New York. Called "the brightest star in New York's choral music world" by The New York Times, he is also Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Music Director of Musica Sacra, the longest continuously performing professional chorus in New York. In addition, Tritle is Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music and is a member of the graduate faculty of The Juilliard School. An acclaimed organ virtuoso, he is also the organist of the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra. www.kenttritle.com

Susanna Phillips, soprano, who sang the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem and Paul Moravec's The Blizzard Voices with the OSNY in recent seasons, returns to the Metropolitan Opera in 2014-15 for a seventh consecutive season starring as Antonia in Bartlett Sher's production of Les contes d'Hoffmann under the baton of James Levine, as well as a reprise of her house debut role of Musetta in La bohème. Just this fall she participated in Chicago's Collaborative Works Festival, and sang Strauss's Four Last Songs at the Louisiana Philharmonic's season-opening concert. http://susannaphillips.com

Aaron Blake, tenor, has sung Messiah, Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, and Mozart's Requiem with the OSNY. Touted as "a vocal powerhouse" by the Los Angeles Times for his elegant portrayal of Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni, he is becoming known as a vibrant interpreter of many of that composer's most challenging roles. In 2014-15, Mr. Blake returns to the Dallas Opera, where he will be involved with the world premiere of Everest by Jolby Talbot, and to the Utah Opera, where he will make his role debut as Ferrando in Così fan tutte. http://aaronblaketenor.com

Sidney Outlaw, baritone, recently sang the title role in Mendelssohn's Elijah with the OSNY. This rising young baritone from Brevard, North Carolina, recently finished his first opera recording for Naxos Records, Darius Milhaud's Oresteia of Aeschylus, singing the role of Apollo. Lauded by The New York Times as a "terrific singer" and The San Francisco Chronicle as "an opera powerhouse," Sidney Outlaw was the Grand Prize winner of the Concurso Internacional de Canto Montserrat Caballe in 2010. http://sidneyoutlaw.com

Oratorio Society of New York - "The Oratorio Society has held the line for choral grandeur," said The New York Times of the Society's performance of Handel's Messiah at Carnegie Hall in 2008. Since its founding in 1873, the OSNY, New York's own 200-voice avocational chorus, has become the city's standard for grand, joyous choral performance. "The sheer energy of the Society's sound had an enveloping fervor," wrote Allan Kozinn in The New York Times of a 2008 presentation of Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem, and of a 2005 performance of Messiah, Jeremy Eichler said in the Times, "this was . . . a vibrant and deeply human performance, made exciting by the sheer heft and depth of the chorus's sound."

The Oratorio Society has performed the world, U.S., and New York premieres of works as diverse as Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem (1877), Berlioz' Roméo et Juliette (1882), a full-concert production of Wagner's Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera House (1886), Tchaikovsky's a cappella Legend and Pater noster (1891) and Eugene Onegin (1908), the now-standard version of The Star Spangled Banner (1917; it became the national anthem in 1931), Bach's B-minor Mass (1927), Dvo?àk's St. Ludmila (1993), Britten's The World of the Spirit (1998), Juraj Filas' Song of Solomon (2012), and Paul Moravec's Blizzard Voices (2013), as well as works by Handel, Liszt, Schütz, Schubert, Debussy, Elgar, and Saint Saëns, among others. On its 100th anniversary the Oratorio Society received the Handel Medallion, New York City's highest cultural award, in recognition of these contributions. www.oratoriosocietyofny.org

DETAILS:

Monday, November 3, 2014, at 8:00 PM

Carnegie Hall - Stern Auditorium, Perelman Stage

ORATORIO SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

Kent Tritle, conductor

Susanna Phillips, soprano

Aaron Blake, tenor

Sidney Outlaw, baritone

The Orchestra of the Society

HAYDN The Creation (Die Schöpfung)

Tickets: $25-$90 at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, 57th St. and 7th Ave. By phone at CarnegieCharge, 212-247-7800, or online at www.carnegiehall.org. For more information, visit www.oratoriosocietyofny.org.