OUR HISTORY  |  PERFORMANCES BY SEASON  |  PAST MUSIC DIRECTORS

Choral and Orchestral Masterworks
Over the years, the Chorale has given critically acclaimed performances of major choral/orchestral masterworks, including:

• Beethoven’s Mass in C, our first performance under the baton of Edward Cumming
  
  
• Verdi’s Requiem, under the direction of noted American choral conductor Joseph Flummerfelt
  
  
• Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, with Yale Camerata and the University of Connecticut Festival Chorus, to commemorate Michael Lankester’s final year as the Music Director of the HSO
  
  
• Sir Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (March 2000), to mark the 100th anniversary of that
  piece’s premiere
  
  
• Requiems of Brahms, Mozart, Verdi, Durufle and Berlioz
  
  
• Premiering works by Dave Brubeck and West Hartford composer Edward Diemente
  
  
• Commissioning two choral/orchestral works: And Sing Eternally by Alice Parker, one of America’s
  finest choral composers and a long-time collaborator of Robert Shaw; and A Symphony of Songs
  by Frederick Tillis, a noted classical and jazz composer from the University of Massachusetts, the
  setting of which was four poems by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Hartford resident,
  Wallace Stevens
  
  
• Bach’s Christmas Oratorio Part I, with CONCORA and the HSO under Richard Coffey
  
  
• Handel’s Messiah, as part of the HSO Masterworks Series for the first time in December 2005, to
  record-setting crowds; Richard Coffey conducted
  
  
• Three performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, including a performance at Woolsey Hall
  in New Haven
  
  
• Mozart’s Requiem, to observe his 250th birth anniversary; one of the performances was dedicated
  to the memory of Donna LeMay, a long-time Chorale member and devoted Chorale manager

Chorale Tours
The Chorale has also toured extensively:

• Invited to participate in the "Voices in the City" festival in Birmingham, England and also performed
  in Ireland and Wales.
  
  
• Participated in a massive performance of Verdi's Requiem in Carnegie Hall, and returned for a solo performance of Mozart's Requiem conducted by Henley Denmead.
  
  
• Fifty members of the Chorale embarked on a twelve-day European tour, with performances
  in Vienna, Salzburg, and Venice.
  
  
• Sixty members of the Chorale toured China in collaboration with the New York Choral Society following an invitation from the Office of the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China. The combined chorus of 150 singers performed a concert of American music, including Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, at the New Century Theater in Beijing, then traveled to Shanghai to perform Verdi's Requiem at the spectacular Grand Theater. The following evening the group appeared in the beloved Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, led by the distinguished Chinese conductor Mr. Hu Yong-Yan.