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program notes
Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony and the National Art Centre in Ottawa. He also makes his debut as the title role in Oedipus Rex with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London at Cal Performances and his recital debut at the Wigmore Hall in London.
Mr. Phan has appeared with many of the leading orchestras in North America and Europe. He has toured extensively throughout the major concert halls of Europe with Il Complesso Barocco and has appeared with the Edinburgh, Ravinia, Rheingau, Tanglewood and Marlboro music festivals and at the BBC Proms. In opera, he has appeared with the LA, Houston Grand, Seattle, Glyndebourne and Frankfurt operas, and the Maggio Musicale in Florence. In recital, he has been presented by Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston’ s Celebrity Series, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and Atlanta’ s Spivey Hall. He is also a founder and the artistic director of the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago, an organization devoted to promoting the art song and vocal chamber music repertoire.
Mr. Phan’ s most recent solo album, A Painted Tale, was released on Avie Records in February of 2015. His solo album, Still Falls the Rain( Avie), was named one of the best classical recordings of 2012 by The New York Times. His discography also includes the Grammy-nominated recording of Stravinsky’ s Pulcinella with Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra( CSO Resound) and the world premiere recording of Elliott Carter’ s orchestral song cycle, A Sunbeam’ s Architecture( NMC).
Nicholas Phan last appeared with the BSO in March 2015, performing Mozart’ s Mass in C minor, Masaaki Suzuki, conductor.
Luca Pisaroni
Since his debut at age 26 with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival,
Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni has continued to appear at the world’ s leading opera houses, concert halls and festivals.
Pisaroni begins the 2016 – 2017 season as Leporello in Mozart’ s Don Giovanni at the Berlin Staatsoper, followed by his role debut as Méphistophélès in Gounod’ s Faust at Houston Grand Opera. He will sing the role of Conte Rodolfo in Bellini’ s La Sonnambula and will return to the Metropolitan Opera to debut as Giorgio in Bellini’ s I Puritani, led by Maurizio Benini. He will then make his highly anticipated debut at Teatro alla Scala as Leporello in Mozart’ s Don Giovanni, under the baton of Paavo Järvi.
Mr. Pisaroni’ s concert appearances include Rossini’ s Stabat Mater at the Musikverein Wien, Händel’ s Messiah with Les Violons du Roy, Beethoven’ s Missa Solemnis for the Elbphilharmonie Opening, Mozart’ s Concert Arias and Schubert’ s Orchestrated Songs with the Wiener Virtuosen and the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker. He will perform Berlioz’ s Romeo and Juliet with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as well as a series of recitals with pianist Maciej Pikulski throughout Europe.
Mr. Pisaroni’ s discography includes Don Giovanni and Rinaldo from the Glyndebourne Festival; Le nozze di Figaro with the Opéra National de Paris; Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro from the Salzburg Festival; and a recording of Don Giovanni with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
He lives in Vienna with his wife, Catherine. Their golden retriever Lenny 2.0 and miniature dachshund Tristan are the singer’ s constant traveling companions.
Luca Pisaroni is making his BSO debut.
About the concert:
Messiah
George Frideric Handel
Born in Halle, Saxony( now Germany), February 23, 1685, died in London, April 14, 1759
Handel’ s great oratorio Messiah has become such a beloved musical icon in the nearly 270 years since its birth in 1741 that it is not at all surprising that many myths and legends have grown up around it. We have been told that Handel himself compiled its mostly Biblical text or, alternatively, that it was sent to him by a stranger; that its success transformed him overnight from a bankrupt operatic hasbeen to England’ s most revered composer; that at its London premiere the king himself rose during the“ Hallelujah Chorus” to express his approbation. But Messiah’ s real story is much more complicated, though no less fascinating.
In the early 1740s, Handel was indeed in considerable professional and financial trouble. After emigrating from Germany to England as a young man, he had enjoyed a celebrated career as the country’ s leading composer of operas, mostly in Italian and enhanced by spectacular costumes and scenic effects. But by the end of the 1730s, Handel’ s serious grand operas were falling out of fashion. The success of John Gay’ s much simpler, English-language The Beggar’ s Opera fueled a new enthusiasm for popular-style comic operas. Unable to fill London’ s opera houses anymore, Handel retreated from the field and turned his genius to sacred dramas or oratorios.
He was not a novice in this genre. Even while busy writing operas, Handel had composed a number of oratorios, notably Israel in Egypt and Saul. Typically, his oratorios were not so very different from his operas; they told a dramatic story— in this case drawn from the Bible or other sacred literature— and their soloists played actual characters. They were performed in theaters and concert halls, not churches. But Israel in Egypt took a new musical approach with the chorus becoming the central character. And Messiah, while giving the soloists more to do, still used the chorus for its climactic moments. Moreover, it broke with Baroque oratorio tradition as a meditation on the coming of the Messiah and his promise for humanity rather than a narrative of events in his life. Handel himself did not compile the group of texts drawn from the Bible’ s Old and New Testaments for Messiah. Instead, this was the work of Charles Jennens, a
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