Handel & Haydn Society Continues 2016-2017 Season Performances

From The Handel and Haydn Society: The Handel and Haydn Society continues its 2016-2017 Season with performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, conducted by Harry Christophers and featuring Jeremy Budd (tenor) and Mark Dobell (tenor) and members of the H+H Chorus as soloists. H+H’s Orchestra and Chorus will be joined by special guests, the H+H Young Women’s Chamber Choir, conducted by Alyson Greer. Performances will take place on Friday, April 7 (7:30pm) at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston and Sunday, April 9 (3pm) at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge. Tickets range from $33-107 and may be purchased by calling (617) 266-3605, visiting handelandhaydn.org, or in person at 9 Harcourt Street in Boston (M-F 10am-6pm). Student and group discounts are available. H+H will also perform the Monteverdi Vespers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur on Saturday, April 8, (7pm) in New York, marking H+H’s return to New York for the first time in 26 years.

Harry Christophers, conductor Jeremy Budd, tenor Mark Dobell, tenor “Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610,” shares conductor Harry Christophers, “is quite simply one of the greatest works of sacred music ever written and without doubt the most varied and inspired before Handel and Bach began composing their oratorios and passions. Its variety alone makes it unique –thrilling psalm settings with virtuosic writing for both multi-part choir and instrumentalists to exotic and sensual settings of texts. Every movement is full of luscious harmonies, beautifully constructed for all concerned.”

“Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 suggests something didactic,” shares H+H Historically Informed Performance Fellow Teresa M. Neff, PhD, “how to blend old and new styles of composition: inserting instrumental passages in a vocal composition, incorporating existing (church) music, and using contemporary vocal techniques within highly imitative passages. It is a work, however, that transcends its function. Monteverdi’s mix of modern and traditional, voice and instrument, choral and solo, sustained sound and virtuosic activity reaches beyond the expression of either text or music alone.”

Program: Monteverdi Vespers of 1610

• Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
• Vespers of 1610

Monteverdi Vespers Audio Previews

Click to listen to audio clips.

Dixit Dominus from Vespers of 1610

• The Sixteen, Harry Christophers, conductor

Pulchra es from Vespers of 1610

• The Sixteen, Harry Christophers, conductor

Images Courtesy Of The Handel and Haydn Society