Choral Society To Sing of Spring Rebirth
The Choral Society of the Hamptons will welcome spring with two popular choral classics, on March 20 at 5 p.m. at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. The program will feature Bach’s Cantata No. 4, “Christ Lay in Death’s Bonds,” and Fauré’s Requiem.
Led by Mark Mangini, the society’s music director, the group will be joined by three soloists, Nita Baxani, soprano, Dominic Inferrera, baritone, and Enrico Lagasca, bass, and by instrumentalists from the South Fork Chamber Ensemble.
J.S. Bach’s Resurrection Cantata, “Christ Lay in Death’s Bonds,” was composed in 1707, when Bach was 21. One of his earliest church cantatas and his first for Easter, it was based on the seven stanzas of Martin Luther’s 1524 hymn of the same name. Its tune was derived from medieval models. John Eliot Gardiner, a noted English conductor, called the work “a bold, innovative piece of musical drama” and Bach’s “first-known attempt at painting narrative in music.”
Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, was an evolving work that he continued to revise between 1887 and 1900. The choral-orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin, it is the best known of his large works. Fauré wrote of the work, “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”
Ms. Baxani has performed a wide range of art songs, oratorio, opera, and musical theater in the United States and Europe. Her operatic roles include world premieres at LaMama ETC in New York City, and she has performed as a soloist at the Kennedy Center and with the Atlantic Symphony Pops Orchestra. She has also appeared in national tours of “Bombay Dreams” and “The King and I.”
A frequent Choral Society soloist, Mr. Inferrera has performed in opera, concert, pops, and jazz settings, including “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” at Manhattan’s Symphony Space, “The Celebrant” in Bernstein’s Mass, and in opera roles around the country. His concert repertoire includes Fauré’s Requiem, Brahms’s “A German Requiem,” and Handel’s “Messiah.”
Like Mr. Inferrera, Mr. Lagasca appeared last summer with the Choral Society in Haydn’s “The Creation.” He sings opera, oratorio, chamber music, and in recitals, with a repertoire including works from the Renaissance to the 21st century. He has performed as soloist and chorister with the American Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Atlanta Symphony.
Mr. Mangini is one of New York City’s most active choral conductors and a founder and music director of the Greenwich Village Chamber Singers. His repertoire ranges from the pre-Bach era with historical instruments, through numerous commissions of contemporary works. In 2007 he led a joint performance of the Choral Society and the Greenwich Village Chamber Singers of Lukas Foss’s “The Prairie” at Lincoln Center.
Tickets to the spring concert are $30 in advance, $35 at the door, with preferred seating priced at $75. Youth tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Tickets and information are available on the society’s website.
A benefit cocktail reception for the conductor and soloists will be held at the Palm restaurant in East Hampton immediately after the concert. Reservations at $100 per person are available at the society’s website until next Thursday.
Looking ahead, the society will conclude its 70th anniversary year with the world premiere of a major work it has commissioned from Victoria Bond, a noted composer, which stresses the human dimensions of the biblical story of Moses. Beethoven’s Mass in C will also be performed.
An auditioned chorus with a professional music director, soloists, orchestra, and accompanist, the Choral Society of the Hamptons has been presenting choral music on the East End since Charlotte Rogers Smith, a local choir director, founded it in 1946.