May (Festival) Time in Cincinnati
Oh yes, the May
Festival!
Cincinnati goes musically on its way into May, though this site has had a hard time keeping up with it.
The 2010 May Festival, 137 years young, dating back to its beginning
in Saengerfest Hall, tin-roofed predecessor of Music Hall, will be celebrated
with its traditional pomp and circumstance May 14-22 in landmark Music Hall, built for it in 1878.
Expect flowers, champagne, dancing around the maypole, herald
trumpeters, patrons dressed to the nines and pre-concert recitals by Festival soloists.
James Conlon, who is
beginning his 31st year as May Festival music director, opens the event at 8
p.m. May 14 at Music Hall. He will lead a
classically rich program, comprising Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (“The Great”),
Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy” and opening with a bit of baroque, celebratory choruses
by George Frederic Handel, ”Awake the Trumpet’s Lofty Sound” (“Samson”), “Oh
Glorious Prince” (“Belshazzar”) and “Worthy is the Lamb” (“Messiah”).
The 130-voice May Festival Chorus and 60-voice May Festival Youth Chorus, directed by Robert Porco and James Bagwell, respectively, will fill the risers behind the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The CSO is the official orchestra of the May Festival, the oldest continuing choral festival in the Western Hemisphere. Vocal soloists will be sopranos Rebekah Camm and Hana Park, mezzo-soprano Erica Brookhyser, tenors John Aler and Paul Appleby and bass James Creswell. Soloist in the “Choral Fantasy” will be Chinese pianist Di Wu.
Onstage, prior to the concert, Conlon will be inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. (The Cincinnati-based ACMHF is headquartered in Memorial Hall, next door to Music Hall.)
One of the monuments of European classical music, “St, Matthew Passion” by Johann Sebastian Bach, will be heard on the second night of the festival, at 8 p.m. May 15, also in Music Hall. Conlon will conduct. A musical re-telling of the events culminating in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew, the work has not been heard at the May Festival since 1985.
The presentation will be enhanced visually by projections above the stage of art works dealing with the Passion story. Soloists will be tenor Aler as the Evangelist and bass William McGraw as Jesus; also soprano Camm, mezzo-soprano Brookhyser, tenor Appleby and bass Creswell. The Cincinnati Boychoir directed by Christopher Eanes will joins the May Festival Chorus and CSO.
Sunday May 16 at 8- p.m. is the annual non-subscription concert at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky. Conlon will conduct the May Festival Chorus, Bagwell will conduct the Youth Chorus in works by Palestrina, Hassler, Mendelssohn, Byrd, Bruckner and Britten. The CSO and organist Heather MacPhail will accompany the performance. Members of the CSO will perform selected Canzoni by Giovanni Gabrieli, also.
The second weekend of the festival opens at 8 p.m. May 21 with a salute to
Porco, who is beginning his 21st year as director of
choruses for the May Festival. (Porco's 20th anniversary was last season, with the actual celebration deferred to this year. Chorus members are referring to it as "the first anniversary of Bob's twentieth anniversary," says chorus member Christine Wands. See comment below.)
Featured on the concert will be the world premiere of Ian Krouse’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” commissioned for Porco by members and alumnae(i) of the May Festival Chorus. Also on the program, which will be conducted by Porco, are Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” and, for the first time since 1993, British composer William Walton’s “Belshazzar’s Feast.” Soloists will be baritone Ljubomir Puskaric and countertenor Paul Flight with the May Festival Chorus.
An all-Russian program rings down the curtain on the 2010 Festival at 8 p.m. May 22 at Music Hall. Conlon has a majestic program in store, with the Prologue and Coronation Scene from Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov,” Rachmaninoff’s one-act opera “Aleko” and (in tribute to late Cincinnati Pops conductor Erich Kunzel, perhaps?), Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture, presumably without live cannons. Vocal soloists will be soprano Kara Shay Thomson, tenor Rodrick Dixon and basses Vladimir Ognovenko and James Creswell. Expect “Hallelujah” (“Messiah”) as well, traditional sing-along finale of the Cincinnati May Festival.