OSL Celebrates Beethoven With Choral Fantasy, Mass In C Major, and More at Carnegie Hall

Orchestra of St. Luke's celebrates Beethoven's 250th birthday on March 5, in the orchestra's final Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium subscription series concert of the season with some of the composer's most striking and colorful works, including his sweeping and dramatic Leonore Overture No. 2. As a stand-alone work, the overture is an operatic tone poem in its own right. For Beethoven's Choral Fantasy pianist Jeremy Denk, La Chapelle de Québec, soprano Karina Gauvin, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor, tenor Andrew Haji, and bass-baritone Matthew Brook join forces for one of Beethoven's most joyous compositions. Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Op. 112, a cantata for chorus and orchestra, is performed in a single movement, and is based on a pair of Goethe's poems about a sea voyage. The Mass in C Major concludes the program.

• Beethoven's Choral Fantasy and Mass in C Major
• Orchestra of St. Luke's
• Bernard Labadie, Principal Conductor
• Karina Gauvin, Soprano
• Kelley O'Connor, Mezzo-Soprano
• Andrew Haji, Tenor
• Matthew Brook, Bass-Baritone
• Jeremy Denk, Piano
• La Chapelle de Québec (Soloists: Stephanie Manias, Soprano; Normand Richard, Baritone)
• BEETHOVEN Leonore Overture No. 2
• BEETHOVEN Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Op. 112
• BEETHOVEN Choral Fantasy, Op. 80
• BEETHOVEN Mass in C Major, Op. 86

WHEN / WHERE: THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020, 8 PM
Carnegie Hall / Stern Auditorium, 57th Street at 7th Avenue

TICKETS: Priced from $15 to $98. Call 212.247.7800 or visit CarnegieHall.org

More about the program

An array of splendid artists-pianist Jeremy Denk, soprano Karina Gauvin, mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor, tenor Andrew Haji, bass-baritone Matthew Brook, and La Chapelle de Québec, one of North America's premiere vocal ensembles-join OSL for this all-Beethoven program of some of his well- and lesser-known choral works. The program opens with the Leonore Overture No. 2, one of three overtures of the same name Beethoven wrote for his only opera, Fidelio, which was originally going to be called Leonore, reflecting the name of its protagonist. Ten years in the making, with numerous rewrites, Fidelio was, by Beethoven's own admission, the most difficult of his works to complete. Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage), Op. 112, a cantata for chorus and orchestra, is performed in a single movement. It premiered in Vienna in 1815 and is based on a pair of Goethe's poems about a sea voyage. The Choral Fantasy begins as an improvisatory piano solo, performed here by Jeremy Denk, introducing a set of variations, and then culminates in a rousing finale for solo singers, chorus, piano, and orchestra.

The concert ends with the Mass in C Major. Young Beethoven received a commission in 1807 to compose a Mass in honor of the name day of Maria Josepha Hermenegild, wife of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy II. This continued a tradition that had been the responsibility of Joseph Haydn, the family's music director for many years.