Merciless Beauty and other songs

 

7:30 pm, Tuesday, May 29, Fourth Presbyterian Church

11:45am, Sunday, June 3, International House at University of Chicago

 

Michelle Areyzaga, soprano • Stephen Boe, violin • Mathias Tacke, violin • Andrew Snow, cello • Gerald Rizzer, piano

 

Alessandro Scarlatti    Cantata: Già lusingato appieno, for soprano,                                     two violins, cello and piano (15")

Sergio Prokofiev          Sonata, Op. 56 (1932), for two violins

Henri Duparc &            Selected Songs, for soprano and piano(12") 

Ernest Chausson                                

    

R. Vaughan Williams    Merciless Beauty, for soprano, two violins                                          and cello (7')

Dan Tucker                       Selected Spanish Songs, for soprano and                                               piano (10')

Alberto Ginastera         Pampeano No. 2, Op. 21 (1950), for cello                                          and piano (9')

BUY TICKETS
$25 general, $10 students

Ticket includes free reception beginning 30 minutes before each concert.

 

Join The Chicago Ensemble for the final program of our landmark 35th season!  Soprano Michelle Areyzaga, whose singing was praised as "most alluring" by The New York Times, will be our vocalist for a program of vocal and instrumental works.

The exquisite love songs of Merciless Beauty, composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams, is among the four vocal works to be performed.  Set to Chaucer poems, these lovely songs display the composer's interest in the modalism of the Renaissance period. Vaughan Williams is the most famous of the English composers of the early 20th century, most of whom turned to English folk song. 

A local highlight will be Selected Spanish Songs by Dan Tucker (1925-2010), who, in addition to being a noteworthy composer, was an editorial writer for The Chicago Tribune for many years. The other two works featuring soprano will be a Baroque cantata by Alessandro Scarlatti and selected works by the late Romantic masters of song Henri Duparc and Ernest Chausson. 

Instrumental works in the program will be Sergei Prokofiev's Sonata, op. 56 (1932) for two violins, with its wide-ranging moods from lyrical and playful to fantastic and dramatic; and the complex, driving gaucho rhythms of Alberto Ginastero's folk-inspired Pampeana No. 2. Composed in 1932 for a Paris chamber group, this Prokofiev sonata precedes both of his violin and piano sonatas.