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These spectacular live performances by the William Ferris Chorale are available as a mid-price release on the Cedille FOUNDation label from Cedille Records.
The acclaimed William Ferris Chorale celebrated its 35th Anniversary with this release of two of its finest performances.
Gian Carlo Menotti is best known for dramatically engrossing operas such as The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Medium. For his Missa “O Pulchritudo”, Menotti applied his operatic skills to create an unusually compelling setting of the Catholic Mass (much as Verdi did with his Requiem). In addition to its gorgeously alluring music, Menotti’s Mass setting is notable for a key textual change: in place of the traditional Credo movement, Menotti sets a passage from the Confessions of St. Augustine that begins, “O Beauty, ever ancient ever new, late have I loved You.”
William Ferris and the William Ferris Chorale performed the Missa at the request of Gian Carlo Menotti, who was present for the performance. This is the only currently available recording of Menotti’s Missa “O Pulchritudo”.
With its sweeping melodies and harmonic grandeur, Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle has been called a triumphant counterpart to Fauré’s Requiem. This recording shows off not only the expert direction of William Ferris and glorious singing of the William Ferris Chorale, it also features two magnificent pipe organs: a rare, fully restored E.M. Skinner, and a tracker action Visser-Rowland.
Preview Excerpts
GIAN CARLO MENOTTI (b. 1911)
Missa "O Pulchritudo"
LOUIS VIERNE (1870-1937)
Messe Solennelle, Op. 16
Artists
1: Recorded in concert December 12, 1982 in Saint James Cathedral, Chicago, in the presence of the composer
Joan Gibbons, soprano
Deborah Fair, mezzo soprano
John Vorrasi, tenor
Thomas Sillitti, bass
William Ferris Chorale
Composer Festival Orchestra
William Ferris, conductor
6: Recorded in concert May 20, 1988 in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Chicago
Thomas Weisflog, grand organ
Dexter Bailey, choir organ
William Ferris Chorale
William Ferris, conductor
Program Notes
Download Album BookletNOTES ON THE PROGRAM
Notes by John Vorrasi
Gian Carlo Menotti: Missa “O Pulchritudo”
“Bill, you love my Missa … you’ll perform it for me, won’t you?” an agitated Gian Carlo Menotti implored William Ferris. It was at that moment on a sweltering summer afternoon in Charleston, South Carolina, that Menotti, upset over the way another conductor was interpreting his Missa, inspired the performance captured on this disc. Ferris did indeed love the Missa, and his overtly passionate spirituality was a perfect match for Menotti’s equally passionate yet covert one. Both men, each in his own way, shared the belief that beauty was a pathway to God.
Menotti’s fame rests primarily on his operatic works, which include The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Saint of Bleecker Street, and The Medium. He has received two Pulitzer prizes, the New York Drama Circle Critic’s Award, the Kennedy Center Honor for achievement in the Arts, and the universal admiration of audiences, if not of critics. His blending of contemporary storytelling with accessible, heartfelt music has helped keep opera a vibrant, living art form.
As Verdi did with the Requiem, Menotti turned his operatic skills to a large scale setting of the Catholic Mass, but with one telling exception: he replaced the Credo movement (the catalog of religious beliefs) with an adaptation of a passage from the Confessions of St. Augustine, “O Beauty, ever ancient ever new, late have I loved You.” This, coupled with the dedication of the work “In honor of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus,” makes for an extremely compelling testament of faith.
Although Menotti feigned embarrassment at this assessment and even downplayed his own dedicatory inscription, the emotional intensity of his expression during the dress rehearsal of the Missa belied his words. I recall watching him closely as he sat in the darkened church listening intently. At the climactic moment of the Sanctus (a drum stroke on the phrase “heaven and earth are full of your glory”) he fell forward to his knees, his head bowed down. I was truly moved at the sight: a man whose genius had created a work of profound beauty, humbled by a sense of Beauty itself.
Louis Vierne: Messe Solennelle, Op. 16
Perhaps it was because he was born nearly blind that Louis Vierne’s music is so filled with color and imagination. Orphaned at an early age, Vierne completed his schooling in the provinces and eventually entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied with César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor. He became the assistant organist at St. Sulpice in 1892 and, in 1900, was appointed organist at Notre Dame. Vierne was a brilliant virtuoso and had great success as a recitalist in both Europe and the United States. He was also a master of improvisation, and as early as 1895 had begun to compose in earnest.
The Messe Solennelle, Opus 16, for four part chorus and two organs, was written in 1899 to showcase the instruments and acoustics of Notre Dame. With its sweeping melodies and harmonic grandeur, the work has justifiably been called a triumphant counterpart to Fauré’s Requiem.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Chicago, while not on the architectural scale of Notre Dame, does have two magnificent pipe organs: a fully restored E. M. Skinner, and a tracker action Visser-Rowland. This performance of the Vierne Messe shows both the organs and the chorus in all their full-throated glory.
©2007 Cedille FOUNDation/The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation
Album Details
Total Time: 72:47
Producer: John Vorrasi
Engineers: Menotti: Brian Ziegler (Lux Cultura)
Vierne: Hudson Fair (Ealing Mobile Recording)
Mastering: Bill Maylone
Graphic Design: Melanie Germond
Cover: The Virgin in Prayer by Sassoferrato (1609-1685) © National Gallery Collection. Reprinted by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London/CORBIS
Publishers: Menotti: Missa “O Pulchritudo” is published
©1979 by G. Schirmer
© 2006 Cedille Records/Cedille Chicago
CDR 7001
