Choral Society Announces New Season
The Choral Society of the Hamptons will present its annual Christmas program on Sunday, with two performances of “Celebrate With Bach and Mendelssohn” at 3 and 5:30 p.m. at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. The concerts will feature Bach’s Magnificat and Mendelssohn’s Magnificat and “Behold a Star From Jacob Shining.”
To kick off the season, the choral society will host a three-course brunch at the Bridgehampton Inn and Restaurant on Sunday at 1. Brunch tickets, which include preferred seating at the concert, are $225. Reservations are being accepted through today at [email protected] or by phone at 204-9402.
Mark Mangini, the society’s musical director, will conduct the singers, who will be joined by four soloists: Darynn Zimmer, soprano, Charlene Marcinko, mezzo-soprano, Nils Neubert, tenor, and Dominic Inferrera, baritone. The South Fork Chamber Orchestra will accompany the vocalists.
Felix Mendelssohn was a musical prodigy who wrote his Magnificat in 1822 at the age of 13. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat, written 100 years earlier, might have provided a model for Mendelssohn, whose admiration for the composer played a pivotal role in the Bach revival of the early 19th century.
Bach’s Magnificat, which is better known than Mendelssohn’s rarely performed version, combines invigorating choruses with some of his most beautiful music for solo voice and orchestra. It was written in Leipzig for the 1723 Christmas Vespers. According to John Bawden, author of “A Directory of Choral Music,” “the extraordinary impact of Bach’s great choral works derives essentially from his remarkable ability to balance, yet at the same time to exploit to the full, the spiritual and dramatic elements of each text.”
The concert will conclude with a performance of “Behold a Star From Jacob Shining,” a late Mendelssohn chorus that is especially suited to the holiday season. At the 3 p.m. concert, the choral society will be joined by 40 members of Sag Harbor’s Pierson High School Chorus for the performance of “Behold a Star From Jacob Shining.”
The society has also announced its spring and summer concerts. On March 22, the program will include Brahms’s “Liebeslieder Waltzes” and other selections, to be performed at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. Jennifer Scott Miceli, who heads the music department at Long Island University Post, will conduct.
Haydn’s “The Creation” will be the centerpiece of the summer concert, which will take place on June 27 in the Parish Hall of Most Holy Trinity Church in East Hampton. Mr. Mangini will conduct, and the chorus will be joined by the Greenwich Village Singers.
Tickets to individual concerts are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Youth tickets are priced at $10, $15 at the door, and preferred seating is available for $75. Subscriptions to all three programs are available at discounted prices. Tickets and information are available at choralsocietyofthehamptons.org and at Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor.
The choral society, an auditioned chorus with a professional music director, soloists, orchestra, and accompanist, has been presenting choral music on the East End since its founding in 1946 by Charlotte Rogers Smith, a local choir director.
The South Fork Chamber Orchestra, with which the chorus often performs, includes musicians from Long Island and New York City. Soloists come from the top ranks of opera, oratorio, and musical theater.