Holidays at Trinity Wall Street: “Messiah” at Tully, Launch of 12th Night Festival
When Trinity Wall Street’s Director of Music and the Arts, Julian Wachner, led the resident Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra in Handel’s Messiah last season, the New York Times praised the performance’s “juxtaposition of serene introspection and ebullient release.” Now the same forces reprise this holiday favorite for their Lincoln Center debut at Alice Tully Hall on December 19, as well as for two performances (Dec 11 &12) at their home in lower Manhattan’s historic Trinity Church. Trinity Wall Street’s seasonal offerings continue with the launch of the first annual Twelfth Night Festival, created in collaboration with many of New York City’s leading early-music ensembles: the Green Mountain Project, TENET, Les Sirènes, and the Sebastian Chamber Players. The festival’s inaugural season (Dec 26 – Jan 6) is framed by the six cantatas that make up J.S. Bach’s exuberant Christmas Oratorio and also includes the Vespers of 1640 by Monteverdi.
Today, Handel’s Messiah is a perennial holiday favorite that reliably draws sellout crowds. In the United States, Trinity Wall Street was instrumental in pioneering the oratorio: Trinity Wall Street presented the second American performance in 1770, and also played a part in the New World premiere, given eight months earlier and just blocks away as a fundraiser for a former Trinity Church employee. Now Wachner keeps the venerable tradition alive, supported by the Trinity Choir, with its “voices so pure they suggest a seraphic chorus beyond the human sphere” (New York Times), and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, one of New York’s finest period-instrument ensembles. Last season, the New York Times observed:
“In his first Messiah with the superb Trinity Choir and the newly-established Trinity Baroque Orchestra, [Wachner] began to put his stamp on the work.… He succeeded admirably, drawing a crystalline texture from his 24-voice choir, which is notable for its bright, pure soprano sound…. As in years past, the soloists in the Trinity Messiah were drawn from the chorus, and…there were affecting solo performances…. The orchestra, filled with well-known period-instrument players …performed commandingly.”
Given Trinity Wall Street’s long and rich association with the work, crowned by this recent success, it is fitting that it is Messiah with which Trinity is due to make its first Lincoln Center appearance on December 19.
Celebrating its commitment to early music, Trinity Wall Street launches the first Twelfth Night Festival this season. Punctuating the festival are the six cantatas of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, performed by Wachner, the Trinity Choir, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra. The New York Times reports that “musical and acoustical forces had combined to transcendent effect” earlier this year, when Wachner led a “moving performance” of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Trinity Choir, Trinity Youth Chorus, and Trinity Baroque Orchestra, with “spine-tingling” results. The six Christmas Oratorio cantatas will be presented in Trinity Wall Street’s “Bach at One” series, which – in historic St. Paul’s Chapel – returns the Baroque master’s sacred vocal music to its original liturgical setting, and is free and open to the public (Dec 26 & 27; Jan 2 & 6). Part I, on December 26, will be coupled with Bach’s uplifting motet Magnificat, complete with Christmas interpolations.
In addition to Trinity Wall Street’s own resident ensembles, the Twelfth Night Festival is proud to present some of New York’s finest early-music groups. Founded by soprano Jolle Greenleaf and named for the English translation of Monteverdi’s last name, the Green Mountain Project scored a resounding hit with its recent accounts of the Italian composer’s seminal 1610 Vespers. As the New York Times confessed, the group’s “performance was quite simply terrific,” and “set a high standard for the many to follow.” Building on this phenomenal success, the ensemble returns with two performances of the Vespers of 1640, which feature more evening prayer music by Monteverdi, Giovanni Gabrieli, and other Venetian composers of the period. Violinist Scott Metcalfe leads the concerts, which take place at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste on New York’s Upper East Side (Jan 3 & 4).
Although Monteverdi was director of music at St. Mark’s in Venice, he also produced nine books of madrigals as well as a number of important operas. As the artistic director of vocal group TENET, Greenleaf helps present this secular side of Monteverdi and his contemporaries in UNO + ONE at Trinity Church (Dec 30). Chamber group Les Sirènes takes up a related theme in Virtuosi Italiani: the Florid Style of Monteverdi and Handel (Jan 5), which explores the two composers’ highly embellished rococo vocal writing. This concert is presented in Trinity Wall Street’s popular “Concerts at One” recital series, which is free and open to the public.
Julian Wachner leads Trinity Wall Street’s resident forces in another “Concerts at One” seasonal presentation: the Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi (“Story of the Birth of Jesus Christ”) by Monteverdi’s German contemporary Heinrich Schütz (Dec 29). Following a sold-out Carnegie Hall recital earlier this month, at which he impressed the New York Times with “the beauty and power” of his voice, countertenor Daniel Taylor returns to direct the Theatre of Early Music in a performance at Trinity Church (Dec 28). Another countertenor – Grammy Award-nominated Ryland Angel – leads the Sebastian Chamber Players in Our Lady I (Dec 27): a program of works celebrating the Virgin Mary, including Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater and Julian Wachner’s own Regina Coeli (1999). “It’s one of my most accessible pieces,” explains the composer-conductor, who compares Regina Coeli’s most effusive passages to the giddy coloratura of “Glitter and Be Gay” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
About Trinity Wall Street
One of the oldest, largest, and most vibrant of all Episcopal parishes, Trinity Wall Street is located in the heart of New York’s financial district, where it has created a dynamic home for great music. Trinity Wall Street’s 2010-11 season got off to an exciting start with the appointment of noted conductor, composer, and keyboardist Julian Wachner as director of Trinity’s Music and the Arts program. Serving as principal conductor of the Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra, he also oversees all liturgical, professional, and community Music and Arts programming at Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel. The Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra offer a full season of concerts ranging from large-scale oratorios to intimate evenings of a cappella singing and chamber music.
NB: The Green Mountain Project and TENET are contributing their services to the Twelfth Night Festival free of charge.
Trinity Wall Street: holiday season 2011-12
Dec 11 at 3pm; Dec 12 at 7:30pm
New York City
Handel: Messiah
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
Trinity Church
Dec 19 at 7:30pm
New York City
Handel: Messiah
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center (debut)
First annual Twelfth Night Festival
Dec 26 at 1pm
New York City
“Bach at One” series
J.S. Bach: Weihnachts-Oratorium (BWV 248), Part I
J.S. Bach: Magnificat (BWV 243a) with Christmas interpolations
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
St. Paul’s Chapel
Dec 27 at 1pm
New York City
“Bach at One” series
J.S. Bach: Weihnachts-Oratorium (BWV 248), Parts II and III
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
St. Paul’s Chapel
Dec 27 at 8pm
New York City
Our Lady I: works celebrating the Virgin Mary
Julian Wachner: Regina Coeli
Gregory Spears: Our Lady
Malcolm Archer: Mary at the Cross
Antonio Vivaldi: Stabat Mater
Ryland Angel, countertenor
Sebastian Chamber Players
Trinity Church
Dec 28 at 8pm
New York City
Daniel Taylor, director/countertenor
The Theatre of Early Music
Trinity Church
Dec 29 at 1pm
New York City
“Concerts at One” series
Heinrich Schütz: Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi (SWV 435)
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
Trinity Church
Dec 30 at 7pm
New York City
UNO + ONE: the secular side of Monteverdi and his contemporaries
TENET (Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn, sopranos; Scott Mello and Sumner Thompson, tenors; Robert Mealy and Daniel Lee, violins; Hank Heijink and Daniel Swenberg, theorbos; Avi Stein, harpsichord)
Trinity Church
Jan 2, 2012 at 1pm
New York City
“Bach at One” series
J.S. Bach: Weihnachts-Oratorium (BWV 248), Parts IV and V
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
St. Paul’s Chapel
Jan 3 & 4 at 7pm
New York City
Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli: Vespers of 1640
Green Mountain Project
Jolle Greenleaf, artistic director
Led by Scott Metcalfe
St. Jean Baptiste (Lexington Avenue at 76th Street)
Jan 5 at 1pm
New York City
“Concerts at One” series
Virtuosi Italiani: the florid style of Monteverdi and Handel
Les Sirènes (Kathryn Mueller, soprano; Kristen Watson, soprano; Cora Swenson, baroque cello; Michael Sponseller, harpsichord)
Trinity Church
Jan 6 at 1pm
New York City
“Bach at One” series
J.S. Bach: Weihnachts-Oratorium (BWV 248), Part VI
Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra / Julian Wachner
St. Paul’s Chapel
All concerts at Trinity Wall Street are professionally filmed and broadcast live at www.trinitywallstreet.org.
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