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MCGEGAN AND MOZART
Nicholas McGegan Conducts A Menu Of Mozart, Gluck, and Arriaga
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Plus Special Opening Performance by 75 High School Students Making up the 30th Annual Collaborative Youth Concerts
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March 3 and 5, 2017 | Symphony Hall, Boston
The press performance is Friday, March 3, 7:30pm
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[Boston, MA – January 15, 2017] The Handel and Haydn Society continues the 2016-2017 Season with a program of works by Mozart, Gluck, and Arriaga, entitled McGegan and Mozart, led by guest conductor Nicholas McGegan, Music Director for San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale. The concerts will be opened by a special guest performance featuring 75 high school students from H+H’s 30th annual Collaborative Youth Concerts. The concerts take place on Friday, March 3 (7:30pm) and Sunday, March 5 (3pm) at Symphony Hall, located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. Tickets range from $23-92 and may be purchased by calling (617) 266-3605, visiting handelandhaydn.org, and in person at 9 Harcourt Street in Boston (M-F 10am-6pm). Student and group discounts are available.
Nicholas McGegan. Photo: RJ Muna
“In McGegan and Mozart,” shares H+H Historically Informed Performance Fellow Teresa M. Neff, PhD, “Gluck, Mozart, and Arriaga speak a common, yet vibrant, musical language using similar forms, harmonies, and instrumentation. In practicing their craft with unceasing devotion, their individual voices as composers were formed. The unique voice of each composer, as well as moments of influence, resounds with the instrumental music heard today.”
McGegan and Mozart Program
Symphony No. 36 in C Major, K. 425, “Linz”, Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (1756–1791)
Music from the Ballet Don Juan, Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787)
Symphony in D Major, Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga (1806–1826)
As he embarks on his fourth decade on the podium, Nicholas McGegan—long hailed as “one of the finest baroque conductors of his generation” (The Independent) and “an expert in 18th-century style” (The New Yorker)—is recognized for his probing and revelatory explorations of music of all periods. In 2014, he led the Handel and Haydn Society in a special production of Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s Acis and Galatea with Mark Morris Dance Group presented by Celebrity Series of Boston, and he makes his H+H subscription series debut with this concert. In 2015 Mr. McGegan began his 30th year as Music Director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and continues as Principal guest conductor of the Pasadena Symphony and artist in association with Australia’s Adelaide Symphony. Best known as a Baroque and Classical specialist, his approach—intelligent, infused with joy, and never dogmatic—has led to appearances with many of the world’s major orchestras. At home in opera houses, he shone new light on close to twenty Handel operas as the artistic director and conductor at the Göttingen Handel Festival for 20 years and on the Mozart canon as principal guest conductor at Scottish Opera in the 1990s. Mr. McGegan’s 2015–2016 Season featured appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (with which he has appeared annually for nearly 20 years), St. Louis, BBC Scottish, RTÉ National, and New Zealand Symphonies; the Cleveland Orchestra/ Blossom Music Festival; and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Caramoor. His extensive discography features eight releases on Philharmonia Baroque’s label, Philharmonia Baroque Productions (PBP) including the 2011 GRAMMY® Award-nominated recording of Haydn Symphonies nos. 88, 101, and 104. Born in England, Mr. McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to music overseas.” Other awards include the Halle Handel Prize; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen, and a declaration of Nicholas McGegan Day, by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of his work with Philharmonia Baroque. In 2013, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Music.
About H+H’s Collaborative Youth Concerts
Handel and Haydn Society celebrates its 30th annual Collaborative Youth Concerts, which unite public high school choruses from across eastern Massachusetts to rehearse and perform classical and Baroque repertoire in their home communities with the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra and Vocal Quartet. The concerts are led by guest conductor Andrew Clark, and include 430 high school students from seven high schools. In addition to the three concerts performed at high schools in February, 75 students from the combined youth choruses will open H+H’s McGegan and Mozart concert, March 3 and 5 at Boston’s historic Symphony Hall. This year, two new schools join the CYC – Wellesley High School and Silver Lake Regional High School in Kingston, MA.
About Harry Christophers, Artistic Director
The 2016-2017 season marks Harry Christophers’ eighth as Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society. Since his appointment in 2009, Christophers and H+H have embarked on an ambitious artistic journey toward the organization’s 200th anniversary with a showcase of works premiered in the U.S. by H+H since 1815, broad education programming, community outreach activities and partnerships, and the release of a series of recordings on the CORO label. Christophers is known internationally as founder and conductor of the UK-based choir and period-instrument ensemble The Sixteen. He has directed The Sixteen throughout Europe, America, Australia, and the Far East, gaining a distinguished reputation for his work in Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th- and 21st-century music. In 2000, he instituted The Choral Pilgrimage, a tour of British cathedrals from York to Canterbury. He has recorded over 120 titles for which he has won numerous awards, including the coveted Gramophone Award for Early Music and the prestigious Classical Brit Award in 2005 for his disc Renaissance. His CD IKON was nominated for a 2007 Grammy and his second recording of Handel’s Messiah on The Sixteen’s own label CORO won the prestigious MIDEM Classical Award 2009. In 2009, he received one of classical music’s highest accolades, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year Award, and The Sixteen won the Baroque Vocal Award for Handel Coronation Anthems, a recording that also received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination as did Palestrina, Vol. 3 in 2014. From 2007, he has featured with The Sixteen in the highly successful BBC television series Sacred Music, presented by actor Simon Russell Beale. The latest hour-long program, devoted to Monteverdi’s Vespers, will be screened in 2015. Harry Christophers is Principal guest conductor of the Granada Symphony Orchestra and a regular guest conductor with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. In October 2008, Christophers was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Leicester. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford , of the Royal Welsh Academy for Music and Drama, and was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2012 Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
About David Snead, President and CEO
David Snead joined H+H as as President and CEO in October 2015 after serving as Vice President of Marketing, Brand and Customer Experience at the New York Philharmonic a role he held since 2001. Previously, he led the marketing programs of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Guthrie Theater, Milwaukee Symphony, and Hartford Symphony. He has also served as Associate Marketing Director of the Minnesota Orchestra, General Manager of the Richmond Symphony, and Executive Director of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony. Snead is on the faculty of the League of American Orchestras’ Patron Model seminars, and is a regular lecturer at New York University and Drexel. A noted expert on the relationship between orchestras and their audiences, he has been a featured speaker at national conferences in the United States, England, France, Finland, the Netherlands, and Australia.
H+H 2016-2017 Season Continues…
Monteverdi Vespers NEC’s Jordan Hall April 7, 2017
Harry Christophers, conductor The Met Museum April 8, 2017 (New York)
Sanders Theatre April 9, 2017
Handel Semele Symphony Hall May 5 + 7, 2017
Harry Christophers, conductor
About the Handel and Haydn Society
The Handel and Haydn Society is internationally acclaimed for its performances of Baroque and Classical music. Based in Boston, H+H’s Orchestra and Chorus delight more than 50,000 listeners each year with a nine concert subscription series at Symphony Hall and other leading venues in addition to a robust program of intimate events in museums, schools, and community centers. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Harry Christophers, the ensemble embraces historically informed performance bringing classical music to life with the same immediacy it had the day it was written. Through the Karen S. and George D. Levy Education Program, H+H also provides engaging, accessible, and broadly inclusive music education to over 10,000 children each year through in-school music instruction and a Vocal Arts Program that includes six youth choruses.
Founded in Boston in 1815, H+H is the oldest continuously-performing arts organization in the United States, and is unique among American ensembles for its longevity, capacity for reinvention, and distinguished history of premieres. H+H began as a choral society founded by middle-class Bostonians who aspired to improve the quality of singing in their growing American city. They named the organization after two composers—Handel and Haydn—to represent both the old music of the 18th century and what was then the new music of the 19th century. In the first decades of its existence, H+H gave the American premieres of Handel’s Messiah (1818), Haydn’s Creation (1819), Verdi’s Requiem (1878), and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1879). Between 2014 and 2016, H+H celebrated its Bicentennial with two seasons of special concerts and initiatives to mark 200 years of music making. Since its founding, H+H has given more than 2,000 performances before a total audience exceeding 2.8 million.
In addition to its subscription series, tours, and broadcast performances, H+H reaches a worldwide audience through ambitious recordings including Haydn Symphonies, the critically-acclaimed Haydn: The Creation, the best-selling Joy to the World: An American Christmas, and Handel Messiah, recorded live at Symphony Hall under Christophers’ direction. http://handelandhaydn.org/
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