Musica Viva NY and Mezzo Frederica Von Stade Perform Next Week

New York City’s leading chamber choir, Musica Viva NY, highlights one of its most important missions: the commissioning of new works. On Sunday, December 3, 2023, at 5:00 p.m., at All Souls on the Upper East Side, 30+ singers and orchestra perform gorgeous music by three living American composers: Joseph Turrin, Gilda Lyons, and Richard Einhorn. This performance is part of a journey that will culminate in an ambitious professional recording (Naxos, TBR 2024) of the pieces presented on this program. Making her Musica Viva NY debut is mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, just prior to her 2024 induction to OPERA America’s Opera Hall of Fame.
 
“Musica Viva NY is looking forward to giving fans a sneak peek of our forthcoming album, the first we’ve recorded during my tenure” says Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, Conductor/Artistic Director of Musica Viva NY. “And, we couldn’t be more excited to welcome our special guest, the legendary singer Frederic von Stade. What a thrilling way to end the year!”  
 
The program’s capstone is the 45-minute cantata by Joseph Turrin (b. 1947), And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair (2018). Performing the solo part is Frederica von Stade, “one of America’s finest artists and singers” (The New York Times) who says she is “so looking forward to this chance to sing Joe’s beautiful song.”

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the World War One Armistice, Musica Viva NY, the New Orchestra of Washington, and the Washington Master Chorale co-commissioned this cantata based on powerful poetry of the Great War. It includes poems by Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Vera Brittain as well as other poets who fought, died, or were bereaved during the conflict. In 14 concise but abundantly rich movements Turrin gives vivid snapshots of the war—reflecting its horror, beauty, profound sadness, and hope. According to Oberon’s Grove, “Mr. Turrin's epic cantata shows his own excellence in writing music - both moving and finely-crafted – for instruments and voices alike. And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair deserves a place of pride in the repertory of choral groups worldwide." 
 
The program continues with Momotombo (2022), an a capella work inspired by one of Nicaragua’s greatest volcanoes. Since early childhood, composer Gilda Lyons (b.1975) was read the rich, rhythmic poetry of Rubén Darío by her Nicaraguan mother who had a deep and layered connection to his work. His poem Momotombo embraces the eternal nature of the volcano. In her program notes, Lyons wrote: “I traced a line from Darío to the sources he references in his poem—Victor Hugo, from Les raisons du Momotombo; and E. G. Squier’s account of the old friars who went up the volcano and did not come back—and beyond—referencing Oviedo’s History of the Indies and a letter to court from Bartolomé de las Casas—all of which exist in the shadow of the eternal Momotombo.”
 
Closing the program is The Luminous Ground for SATB chorus, strings, and piano which was written for, and premiered last year by, Musica Viva NY. Inspired by the widely-known artist James Turrell and his groundbreaking light installations (recently on display at The Pace Gallery and The Guggenheim), composer Richard Einhorn (b.1952) seeks to turn the sculptures’ contemplative nature into a slow, gradually changing soundscape that always remains still and hushed. “According to the great Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, ‘The Luminous Ground’ is that stage in a person's progress towards enlightenment when ‘the pacifying light of wisdom dawns’ and ‘attachment and aversion have thoroughly ceased’,” explains Einhorn. “It is a nearly unimaginable state of serenity, but one that is evoked, for me, by the extraordinary light sculptures of James Turrell.”
 

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