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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
The Chorale has also toured extensively:
- It was a great honor to be invited to sing at the Cultural
Olympiad in China! In collaboration with the New York Choral Society,
we traveled to China in June 2008, to sing in the Opening Ceremony
of the Olympic Cultural Festival in Beijing, another concert in
the Beijing Concert Hall, and a third concert in Qingdao, in the
Qingdao People's Hall.
- 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.
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