Celebrity Series of Boston will present the Vienna Boys Choir on Sunday, December 4, 2011, at 3pm at NECÂ’s Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston. This performance is sponsored by The D.L. Saunders Companies and The Boston Park Plaza Hotel, LLC.
Tickets for Vienna Boys Choir are $57, $52 and $47, and are available online at www.celebrityseries.org, by calling CelebrityCharge at (617) 482-6661 Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. or at the NECÂ’s Jordan Hall Box Office, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston.
The Celebrity Series of Boston first presented the Vienna Boys Choir in 1948. This will be their 41st performance with Celebrity Series.
The Vienna Boys Choir was officially founded in 1498 as part of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian IÂ’s instructions for the formation of the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle. The choir sang exclusively for the court, at Mass, at private concerts and functions and on state occasions until the breakdown of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire in 1918. At this time, the government took over the court opera (i.e. the opera, its orchestra and the adult singers), but not the boysÂ’ choir. The Choir owes its survival to the initiative of Josef Schnitt, who became Dean of the Imperial Chapel in 1921. Schnitt established the boys’ choir as a private institution: the former court choir boys became the Wiener Sängerknaben, and the imperial uniform was replaced by the sailor suit, then the height of boys’ fashion. Funding was not enough to pay for the boys’ upkeep, and in 1926, the choir started to give concerts outside of the chapel, performing motets, secular works and – at the boys’ request – children’s operas, which remain an important part of their repertoire. Within a year, the Wiener Sängerknaben were performing in Berlin (where Erich Kleiber conducted them), Prague and Zurich. Athens and Riga (1928) followed, then Spain, France, Denmark, Norway and Sweden (1929), the United States (1932), Australia (1934) and South America (1936).
Many of the alumni go on to become professional musicians, conductors, singers or instrumentalists, in Vienna and throughout the world. Over its long history, the Vienna Boys Choir has been instrumental in the careers of many renowned musicians, including composers Jacobus Gallus, Franz Schubert and conductors Hans Richter, Felix Mottl and Clemens Krauss, who were all choristers in their childhood.
Today, some 100 choristers between the ages of 10 and 14 are divided into four touring choirs. The four choirs give around 300 concerts and performances each year before almost half a million people. Each group spends nine to eleven weeks of the school year on tour. They visit virtually all European countries, and they are frequent guests in Asia, Australia and the Americas. In recent years, they have performed with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Guest conductors include Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti (honorary member of the Hofmusikkapelle), Kent Nagano, Seiji Ozawa and Franz Welser-Möst. Together with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, the Wiener Sängerknaben also maintain the tradition of the imperial musicians: as Hofmusikkapelle they provide the music for the Sunday Mass in Vienna’s Imperial Chapel, as they have done since 1498.
The program for this performance is:
Heinrich Schà 1/4tz Jubilate Deo (Praise God), SWV. 276
Jacobus Gallus Natus est nobis (For unto us is born)
Joseph Haydn/ Arr. Florian Schwarz Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk, The Creation
Vollendet ist das große Werk, The Creation
Zoltán Kodály Túrot eszig a cigány (The Gypsy chews curd)
Robert Schumann Zigeunerleben (Gypsy lif
