Revolutionaries Festival at Trinity Wall Street Celebrates Centennial of Alberto Ginastera (March 3–May 20)
Reinforcing its reputation as “a mini-Lincoln Center for classical music downtown” (New Yorker), Trinity Wall Street’s Music & the Arts program this spring presents Revolutionaries: the late works of Beethoven and Ginastera. This 15-event celebration of Alberto Ginastera’s centennial pairs music from his third compositional period with the late works of fellow revolutionary Ludwig van Beethoven, along with selected works by other composers supporting the revolution theme. Highlighted by Beethoven’s epic Symphony No. 9 and Missa Solemnis, and Ginastera’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Psalm 150, the Revolutionaries festival encompasses more than 40 works, including Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Fauré’s Requiem, and numerous smaller-scale solo and chamber works. Performances take place during Concerts at One at Trinity Church from March 3–May 20, with additional concerts during the festival’s final week. Both NOVUS NY, the resident orchestra for the Concerts at One Third Thursdays series, and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, under the direction of Trinity’s Director of Music and the Arts, Julian Wachner, will be integral to the Revolutionaries festival, with guest artists 1B1; the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin; guitarist Eliot Fisk; cellist Matt Haimovitz; the Borromeo String Quartet; Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen; the Momenta Quartet with pianist Vicky Chow; organist Chelsea Chen; and flutist Alex Sopp, in addition to new music specialists Jeffrey Zeigler, Pedja Muzijevic, Ashley Bathgate, and the Enso String Quartet. Trinity’s new semiprofessional choir, Downtown Voices, and The Trinity Youth Chorus will join the festival for its final week (May 15–20).
Ginastera and Beethoven
During his Neo-Expressionist third period, Ginastera synthesized avant-garde twelve-tone techniques with the idioms of his native Argentina, achieving a truly original compositional voice. Similarly, it was through the compositions of his own third period that Beethoven most conclusively revolutionized Western art music. Apart from their revolutionary influence as composers, both Ginastera and Beethoven were also caught up in the political upheaval of their respective times. Beethoven’s sympathy with the French Revolution and admiration for Napoleon are common knowledge; so too is the account of his striking the dedication to Napoleon from his “Eroica” symphony when his hero flouted the ideals of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” by crowning himself emperor. Less well known is Ginastera’s role in the unrest that led to the Argentine Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Having lost an early teaching position for protesting the dismissal of his colleagues, Ginastera went on to lose his directorship of the conservatory that he himself had founded, for resisting orders to name it for Eva Perón. Several of his works were banned in his homeland, and he spent much of his life in self-imposed exile.
NOVUS NY and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, under Wachner’s direction, presented Ginastera’s monumental Turbae ad passionem gregorianam at Carnegie Hall last season, when the New York Times noted: “Adventure and ambition go hand in hand at Trinity Wall Street.” These same forces will anchor four large-scale concerts in the Revolutionaries festival. First is a performance of Ginastera’s remarkable Cantata para América mágica for solo soprano and 53 percussion instruments, featuring soprano Sarah Brailey and programmed alongside Stravinsky’s radical ballet Les Noces, with soloists Brailey, alto Melissa Attebury, tenor Vale Rideout, and bass-baritone Joseph Beutel (March 17). The second program, with featured soloist Christopher Herbert, is a pairing of Ginastera’s Cantata Bomarzo, transformed in the late ‘60s into an opera notorious for its sex and violence and banned in Argentina, with Fauré’s Requiem (April 21). In the final week of the festival NOVUS NY and Wachner present Ginastera’s Cello Concerto No. 1, with pioneering cellist Matt Haimovitz as soloist, along with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis featuring The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Downtown Voices (May 15). Bringing the festival to a close, and with the further addition of The Trinity Youth Chorus, are Ginastera’s early but forward-looking double-choir piece Psalm 150 and Beethoven’s titanic Ninth Symphony (May 20).
Other festival events include two string quartet pairings. The Enso Quartet, which released a Grammy-nominated recording of the complete Ginastera string quartets in 2009, performs Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 alongside Ginastera’s Quartet No. 3, scored for soprano and featuring Mellissa Hughes (April 7). The Martin E. Segal Award–winning Borromeo Quartet performs Ginastera’s Quartet No. 2, Op. 26 alongside Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (May 5). Similarly, in the festival’s final week, the Momenta Quartet combines Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 with Ginastera’s sole Piano Quintet, enlisting the help of pianist Vicky Chow (May 17).
Rounding out the festival offerings are two chamber orchestra programs with groundbreaking Norwegian ensemble 1B1 and Moscow’s Chamber Orchestra Kremlin; a concert with organist Chelsea Chen that includes Ginastera’s Op. 52, Variations (one of only two solo organ works he composed); a solo cello performance by Bang on a Can All-Star Ashley Bathgate; a solo flute performance by The Knights member Alex Sopp; a solo performance by incomparable guitarist and Segovia protégé Eliot Fisk; and much more.
A full schedule of events is provided here.
Trinity Wall Street
One of the oldest, largest and most vibrant of all Episcopal parishes, Trinity Wall Street is located in the heart of Manhattan’s Financial District, where it has created a dynamic home for music; as the New York Times acknowledges, “Trinity’s music is indispensable and unmissable.” Serving as director of Trinity’s Music and the Arts Program – as well as principal conductor of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the period-instrument Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and contemporary-music ensemble-in-residence NOVUS NY – Julian Wachner also oversees all liturgical, professional and community music and arts programming at Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel. The New Yorker has described Trinity Wall Street’s cultural offerings as representing “a mini-Lincoln Center for downtown Manhattan.” The music at Trinity ranges from large-scale oratorios to chamber music, and from intimate a cappella singing to jazz improvisation. Many concerts at Trinity Wall Street are professionally filmed and webcast live at www.trinitywallstreet.org/videos.
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Trinity Wall Street
REVOLUTIONARIES: THE LATE WORKS OF BEETHOVEN AND GINASTERA
All performances are free, and take place at Trinity Church, Broadway at Wall Street, NYC.
Thursday, March 3, 1pm
Concerts at One
John Corigliano: Voyage
Eskender Bekmambetov: For Misha’s Gang, Suite for small, regular, large and extra-large fiddles (world premiere)
Alberto Ginastera: Concerto for strings, Op. 33
Chamber Orchestra Kremlin
Thursday, March 10, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: Sonata, Op. 49
Ludwig van Beethoven: Twelve Variations for cello and piano in G major on Handel’s “See, the Conqu’ring Hero
comes,” WoO 45
Richard Wilson: Motivations
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello; Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Thursday, March 17, 1pm
Concerts at One: Third Thursdays with NOVUS NY
Alberto Ginastera: Cantata para América mágica
Igor Stravinsky: Les Noces
NOVUS NY; The Choir of Trinity Wall Street; Sarah Brailey, soprano; Melissa Attebury, alto; Vale Rideout, tenor; Joseph Beutel, bass-baritone / Julian Wachner
Thursday, March 31, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: Puneña No. 2, Op. 45 (“Hommage à Paul Sacher”)
Benjamin Britten: Cello Suite No. 3, Op. 87
J.S. Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV1007
Ashley Bathgate, cello
Thursday, April 7, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: String Quartet No. 3 for soprano and string quartet, Op. 40
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
Enso Quartet; Mellissa Hughes, soprano
Thursday, April 14, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 53
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major (“Hammerklavier”), Op. 106
Paavali Jumppanen, piano
Thursday, April 21, 1pm
Concerts at One: Third Thursdays with NOVUS NY
Alberto Ginastera: Cantata Bomarzo, Op. 32
Gabriel Fauré: Requiem (1893 version)
NOVUS NY; The Choir of Trinity Wall Street; Christopher Herbert, baritone / Julian Wachner
Thursday, April 28, 1pm
Concerts at One
Claude Debussy: Syrinx
Edgard Varèse: Density 21.5
Astor Piazzolla: Tango Etudes for solo flute
Alberto Ginastera: Puneña No. 1, for flute, Op. 41 (1973, left incomplete at the time of the composer’s death)
Julian Wachner: Inverted Skies
Alex Sopp, flute
Thursday, May 5, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 26
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
Borromeo String Quartet
Thursday, May 12, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: Variazioni e Toccata sopra “Aurora lucis rutilat,” Op. 52
Maurice Duruflé: Prelude, Adagio and Chorale Variations on “Veni Creator”
Nicolas De Grigny: Veni Creator Spiritus
Chelsea Chen, organ
Sunday, May 15, 3pm
Alberto Ginastera: Cello Concerto No. 1
Ludwig van Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street; Downtown Voices; NOVUS NY; Matt Haimovitz, cello / Julian Wachner
Tuesday, May 17, 1pm
Concerts at One
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111
Alberto Ginastera: Piano Quintet, Op. 29
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135
Momenta Quartet; Vicky Chow, piano
Thursday, May 19, 1pm
Concerts at One: Third Thursdays
Alberto Ginastera: Glosses sobre temes de Pau Casals, Op. 46
Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen
Knut Nystedt: Concerto Arctandriae, Op. 128
1B1
Friday, May 20, 1pm
Concerts at One
Alberto Ginastera: Sonata for guitar, Op. 47
Robert Beaser: Shenandoah for solo guitar
Luciano Berio: Sequenza XI
John Corigliano: Red Violin Caprices
Eliot Fisk, guitar
Friday, May 20, 7pm
Alberto Ginastera: Psalm 150
Ludwig Van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street; The Trinity Youth Chorus; Downtown Voices; NOVUS NY; 1B1 / Julian Wachner
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© 21C Media Group, February 2016