UW Choral Union with UW Chamber Orchestra

press release: Choral Union – The Kodály Te Deum and The Duruflé Requiem - Ticketed

TWO DATES: Saturday, December 8, 2018, 8 PM, and Sunday, December 9, 7:30 PM.

Beverly Taylor, conductor.    Buy tickets here.

The Zoltan Kodaly Te Deum is a song of praise to God that ends with the words “Let me never be confounded.” Written in 1937, the work is about 20 minutes long and is wonderful for its many moods and styles in a short amount of time.The music begins heroically, grows quiet, turns slow and majestic, then darkly moody as the soloists sing long lines over chanted lines in the chorus. This middle section draws on Hungarian folktunes for its unusual scales. From this quiet, the music grows faster and stronger and breaks into a joyous fugue. Not to end there, the mood changes to quiet, with the chorus and soprano soloist singing unaccompanied by anyone except string basses and a few wind instruments.

The Duruflé Requiem by the French organist and composer Maurice Duruflé bears many things in common with the Fauré Requiem, in that the style is often flowing, chant-like (it is based on Gregorian chant), and with the warmth of late French Romanticism. Unlike the Fauré Duruflé orchestrated the work for full orchestra with wind instruments replacing the organ in the original (performed several years ago by my colleague Bruce Gladstone in Luther Memorial Church.) This colorful full version is performed for the first time at the UW-Madison, and will feature baritone soloist Michael Johnson and mezzo soloist Chloe Flesch. – Beverly Taylor.