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Holiday Favorites from Schott/EAM In Performance Throughout the US

Nov. 29, 2011

Holiday Favorites from Schott/EAM In Performance Throughout the US

As we turn the page to 2012, we're happy to offer our annual sampling of concerts featuring holiday programming from the Schott/EAM family. We hope these highlights from our trove of festive concert openers, choral and symphonic works will whet your programming appetite for future holiday concerts.

On December 3 Philip Brunelle leads the choral ensemble VocalEssence through Stephen Paulus’ grand Christmas cantata So Hallow’d is the Time, for mixed chorus with string orchestra. The VocalEssence program will be recorded for broadcast in 2012 on Minnesota Public Radio Classical (regional) and American Public Media (national). Broadcast dates forthcoming.

The Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic performs Penderecki’s Symphony No. 2, “Christmas Symphony” on December 11 at the Church of the Epiphany in Washington, DC and December 18 in Alexandria, Virginia. Completed in 1980, the Second Symphony was premiered on May 1 of that year in New York with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Amongst the multitude of contrasting themes, the beginning of the Christmas carol Silent Night can be heard, almost as if in passing, like music from a distant memory or a recollection from childhood.

Benjamin Britten’s Men of Goodwill sees performances at Valparaiso University in Indiana on December 2, the Newark Granville Symphony Orchestra of Ohio conducted by Timothy Weis on December 4, and with Canto Deo Choir of Colorado conducted by Jonathan Brown on December 17 in Aurora, Colorado. Composed as a set of variations on the Christmas carol God rest ye merry, gentlemen for full orchestra, Men of Goodwill is a varied and entertaining concert-piece consisting of five contrasting short movements.

Nigel Hess’ A Christmas Overture sees performances in Maryland and Tennessee. Another exciting recent addition to the Christmas repertoire, Nigel Hess's bustling seven minute A Christmas Overture is a must for opening any seasonal orchestral concert. It was commissioned by John Rutter and features on his disc, A Christmas Festival, released in 2008 on the Collegium label. The overture was featured in the 2008 programs of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia. To order your copy of A Christmas Festival, click here.

Lee Hoiby's 2009 addition to the holiday canon, The Christmas Tree, beautifully displays the composer's full command of powerful choral sonorities and the handsome, outflung line he loved. Commissioned for the Washington National Cathedral's 2009 seasonal festivities, the carol again takes verses from the 17th-century mystical poet Richard Crashaw, also the source text of Hoiby's 1960 heralded cantata A Hymn of the Nativity. In four minutes the roof is rapturously raised, in the manner of Hoiby's much-performed Hymn to the New Age.

Stephen Paulus
So Hallow’d is the Time (1980)
Christmas Cantata for mixed chorus and string orchestra
40’

Krzysztof Penderecki
Symphony No. 2 1979/1980)
“Christmas Cantata”
for orchestra
pic.2.2.ca.3(3.bcl).2.cbsn-5.3.3.1-timp.4perc-cel.str
36’

Benjamin Britten
Men of Goodwill (1947)
variations on the Christmas carol, God rest ye merry, gentleman
for orchestra
2.pic.2.2.2-4.2.3.1-timp-2perc-hp-str
8’

Nigel Hess
A Christmas Overture (2007) 
for orchestra 
3(3.pic).2(2.ca).2.2-4.3.3.1-timp-3perc-org(opt cel)-hp–str 
7'

Lee Hoiby
The Christmas Tree (2009)
available in versions for SATB chorus and organ, or SATB chorus, brass, percussion and organ 
text by Richard Crashaw
orchestra version: 2.2.2.bcl.2-4.2.3.1-perc-cel.hp-str
4'

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