Pergolesi: Stabat Mater ~ Vivaldi: Gloria

Musical Director: James Orrell

Wednesday, 10 June 2015, New College Chapel, 8.00pm

Both the Stabat Mater and the Gloria are two of the best known sacred texts. Pergolesi’s setting, completed shortly before his death in 1736, is for soprano, alto, two violins and continuo and was influenced by the secular cantata and the chamber duet. His setting achieved immediate popularity and appeared in print many times during the 18th century. Vivaldi’s slightly earlier Gloria, RV589, possibly written in 1715, is in twelve movements. In contrast to the always popluar Pergolesi Satbat Mater, it was little known until it was included in the Vivaldi Week in 1939 at Sienna; it has been regularly performed ever since.

New College Ante-chapel
30 & 31 January 2015
8.30pm
Tickets £12/£6 concessions from TicketSource

Mrs P: Rose Rands;
Dr P: Brian McAlea;
Dr S: Tim Coleman

Musical director: Michael Pandya;
Director: Michael Burden;
Repetiteur: James Orrell

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman which was first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 27 October 1986. The libretto is by libretto by Christopher Rawlence, who adpated it from the case study of the same name by Oliver Sacks. Accordsing to Saks, the story ‘inestiagtes the world of a person (Dr P) with visual agnosia (or “mental blindness” due to damage of the visual parts of the brain). Such patients “see but do not see”. They see colours, lines, boundaries, simple shapes, patterns, movement – but they are unable to recognise, or find sense in, what they see. They cannot recognise people or places or common objects; their visual world is no longer meaningful’ In Nyman’s opera, Dr P, a singer and singing teacher, is able to continue to communciate through music, and the minimalist score makes use of songs by Robert Schumann, in particular, ‘Ich grolle nicht’ from Dichterliebe.

New College Ante-chapel
21 & 22 November 2014
8.30pm
Tickets £12/£6 from TicketSource

Musical director: Michael Pandya
Director: Michael Burden

Pimpinone: George Robarts
Vespetta: Bernadette Johns

in a new translation by Simon Rees

Tomaso Albinoni’s short intermezzo, The Domineering Chambermaid, tells the story of a servant girl, Vespetta, who marries her rather dim employer, Pimpinone, and having apparently made him the happiest man in the world, proceeds to misbehave, take his money, and embarrass him in public. She declares: ‘she will do exactly what she wants to do’! The piece was originally intended as light entertainment between the acts of an opera seria; it was first performed in 1708.

Bach: Easter Oratorio
Carissimi: Jepthe

Conductor/Director: Michael Pandya

8.00pm, Wednesday 11 June 2014
New College Chapel

Tickets £10/£5 concessions available from:

http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/event/58763

and on the door.

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Bach: Easter Oratorio

The Easter Oratorio, Bach’s first venture into the genre, began life as a cantata for Easter Sunday in 1725. The oratorio has attracted some criticism for its curious beginnings, the original cantata having been hastily re-worked from a pastoral drama per musica and the two shepherds (Menalcas and Damoetas) and two shepherdesses (Doris and Sylvia) transformed into Christ’s disciples. Far from downgrading the work and stifling its potential as a sacred expression, these secular roots breathe life, air and unabashed joy into this most celebratory day in the Christian calendar, consider the abundance of dance forms throughout the work, an ebullient gigue hailing the final chorus of thanksgiving. The cantata was expanded and re-scored in 1738 to become the Easter Oratorio, Bach curbing some of the more theatrical elements of the original to provide a more meditative atmosphere to the paraphrased scriptural narrative. The text begins with a description of the disciples Mary Magdalen, Mary Jacobe, Simon Peter and John running over each other on Easter morning to anoint the body of Jesus in the tomb. A superbly crafted Adagio for oboe and strings for the second movement conveys the sense of deep loss whilst the triple metre rushing sinfonia and chorus either side evoke the rushing desperation of the disciples to look upon Jesus’ body and pay tribute. After the fourth and fifth movements of mourning, the disciples find that the body is missing and the resurrection is revealed to them by and angel, the disciples departing with their voices raised in joyful thanksgiving.

Carissimi: Jepthe

Carissimi’s Jepthe, or Historia di Jepthe was composed around 1650; the work is often dated to 1648. At the time it was written, the word ‘oratorio’ was only gradually coming into use, and many of Carissimi’ s works are described as ‘Historia’. They were also in Latin, although all the texts were anonymous, and were designed as one-part works. However, Howard E. Smither has subdivided Jepthe into two Parts, Part I (in three subsections) emphasising ‘optimistic affections’, and Part 2 (in two subsections) consisting of lamentations. In Part 1, Jepthe vows he will kill the first person to come out of his house, if the Lord grants him victory over the Ammonites. He does win the battle, and then celebrates. But the first person to meet him out his house is his daughter, and he laments that he has to sacrifice her; a final chorus from her and her followers concludes the piece. Based on the story from the Book of Judges in the Old Testament, the work uses a narrator whose part links the solos and choruses; these use the biblical text. Only a continuo accompanies the singers.