Mastervoices to Present Night Songs And Love Waltzes, An Evening of Vocal And Piano Works March 1, 2019 at Alice Tully Hall

19th-Century Romantic German Song is Featured Alongside Ricky Ian Gordon’s Life is Love to Poems of Langston Hughes which includes a World Premiere Commission, and the New York Premiere of Ted Sperling’s Night Waltzes, A Choral Suite from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music 

Featured Soloists Include Singers Nicole Cabell, Kate Aldrich, Nicholas Phan, and Nmon Ford, and piano duo Anderson & Roe

MasterVoices, led by its Artistic Director Ted Sperling, presents Night Songs and Love Waltzes, an evening of vocal and piano works on Friday, March 1, 2019 at 8:00 PM at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The ensemble’s second concert of the 2018–2019 season will feature MasterVoices’ 120 singers in a program including Johannes Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes and songs by other Romantic-era composers, Felix Mendelssohn, Clara and Robert Schumann, and Franz Schubert; Ricky Ian Gordon’s Life Is Love, set to poems by Langston Hughes (new arrangements and a world premiere commissioned by MasterVoices); and the New York premiere of Ted Sperling’s Night Waltzes, his arrangements of selections from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.

A stellar quartet of vocalists—Nicole Cabell, Soprano, Kate Aldrich, Mezzo-Soprano, Nicholas Phan, Tenor, and Nmon Ford, Baritone — as well as renowned piano duo Anderson & Roe, cellists Peter Sachon and Mairi Dorman, and a horn quartet led by Zohar Schondorf, join MasterVoices. The program encompasses multiple configurations: vocal solos, duets, trios, and quartets, men’s chorus, women’s chorus, and the full MasterVoices chorus.  Anderson & Roe will also perform piano instrumental works.

Commenting on the program, Ted Sperling said, “With Night Songs and Love Waltzes, we evoke a time when enjoying music at home meant you had to make it yourself—singing with friends, either a cappella or gathered around a piano, or joined by other musicians. I’ve wanted to program Brahms’ enchanting Liebeslieder Waltzes for a long time and we shaped the evening around this marvelous collection of short songs, which features soloists, chorus, and duo piano, inviting an outstanding roster of guest artists to make music with us. With songs by important Romantic-era composers, and works by contemporary geniuses Ricky Ian Gordon and Stephen Sondheim, interspersed with inspired piano pieces, we hope to create the sense of bonhomie that filled those long-gone salons.”

Tickets, starting at $30 for Night Songs and Love Waltzes are available online at lincolncenter.org, by calling 212.721.6500, or in person at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office, 1941 Broadway, at West 66th Street.

Information about MasterVoices’ 2018–2019 season can be found at mastervoices.org.

MasterVoices
Night Songs and Love Waltzes

MasterVoices
Ted Sperling, Artistic Director, Conductor
Nicole Cabell, Soprano
Kate Aldrich, Mezzo-Soprano
Nicholas Phan, Tenor
Nmon Ford, Baritone
Anderson & Roe, Piano Duo
Peter Sachon, Cello
Mairi Dorman, Cello
Zohar Schondorf, French Horn

RODGERS AND SONDHEIM; arr. TED SPERLING Do I Hear A Waltz? from Do I Hear a Waltz?         
BRAHMS Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52
BRAHMS, arr. ANDERSON & ROE Virtuoso Hungarian Dance (based on Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor)
SCHUBERT Ständchen, D. 920
ROBERT SCHUMANN Jagdlieder, Op. 137
ROBERT SCHUMANN Mondnacht, Op. 39, No. 5
ROBERT SCHUMANN Zigeunerleben, Op. 29, No. 3
SONDHEIM, arr. TED SPERLING (NY premiere) Night Waltzes, Choral Suite from A Little Night Music
CLARA SCHUMANN Gondoliera
MENDELSSOHN Verleih’ uns Frieden
PIAZZOLLA, arr. ANDERSON & ROE Libertango
RICKY IAN GORDON Life is Love*

*Song cycle to poems of Langston Hughes, new arrangements, and a world premiere commission by MasterVoices.                                                                                                    

More About the Vocal Works
Clara Schumann enjoyed a career in the public sphere as a composer and performer, an achievement rare for a woman at the time. She always included at least one of her own works in every performance to promote her compositional skill. Her Gondoliera from 1848, is one of three choral works for mixed voices composed in honor of her husband, Robert Schumann’s 38th birthday.

The Robert Schumann works on the program are the well-known part song Zigeunerleben (Gypsy Life) Op. 29, No. 1 for soloists, mixed choir and piano, set to a poem by Emanuel Geibel, Jagdlieder (Hunting Songs) Op. 137 for men’s choir and four french horns, from the composer’s Waldszenen, and Mondnacht (Moonlit Night) Op. 39, No. 5 for tenor and piano. These three works showcase the composer’s love of poetry that embodies the many facets of Romanticism.

In 1827 Franz Schubert was asked by a friend, Anna Fröhlich to write a serenade to a poem by another friend, Franz Grillparzer, for her female pupil’s 24th birthday. Misunderstanding the request, Schubert composed Ständchen (also known as “Notturno”) D920 for a male chorus, but Anna and her female friends wanted to serenade the birthday girl. He reworked the song for mezzo-soprano, female chorus, and piano. MasterVoices’ program will present this version to showcase the women’s chorus, with mezzo-soprano soloist, Kate Aldrich.

The poetry of Langston Hughes has long served as inspiration for composer Ricky Ian Gordon. His two song cycles of Hughes poems for solo voice and piano — Genius Child (1993) and Only Heaven (1995) — received high praise.  Reviewing the latter, Opera News said his settings were “melodic, intimate, with an inspired gift for bringing out the inner music of a given poem in unexpected ways.” For MasterVoices, Gordon has reworked earlier Hughes settings, and has written a new song, God, commissioned by the ensemble, which will receive its world premiere. The cycle is composed for soloists, chorus, piano four-hands, horns, and cellos. Duo Anderson & Roe are also featured in a piano four-hands instrumental movement.

There is a strong suggestion from a 1868 letter Johannes Brahms wrote to the widowed Clara Schumann, that his Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52, for two pianists with vocal quartet, written that same year, was borne of his frustration and unrequited love for her. The texts are from Georg Friedrich Daumer’s Polydora, a collection of 18 folk songs and love poems.

Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 musical masterpiece, A Little Night Music, inspired by the Bergman film, Smiles of a Summer Night, explores the entangled romantic lives of several couples. In his Night Waltzes, Ted Sperling has made soaring new arrangements for soloists, chorus, piano, cellos, and horns to selections from the beloved, Award-winning musical. This performance will be the work’s New York premiere.

About MasterVoices
MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale) was founded in 1941 by the legendary American choral conductor Robert Shaw and is currently under the artistic direction of Ted Sperling. For 77 years, the organization has presented varied programming, with emphasis in three areas: choral masterpieces, operas in concert, and musical theater. Choral classics performed by MasterVoices have included Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion, Brahms’ Requiem, Britten’s War Requiem, Fauré’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mozart’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Verdi’s Requiem. The company has presented several important premieres, including the U.S. premieres of Dvorák’s Dmitri and Handel’s Jupiter in Argos, and the New York premieres of Respighi’s La Fiamma, Glass’s The Juniper Tree, and Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath. Other rarely heard operas presented in concert have included Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, Tchaikovsky’s Maid of Orleans, Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon, and Joplin’s Treemonisha. Throughout its history, MasterVoices has specialized in presenting rarely heard works of musical theater and standard works with a fresh approach, including Bernstein’s A White House Cantata, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Weill’s The Firebrand of Florence, Knickerbocker Holiday, and the world premiere of a concert version of The Road of Promise.

MasterVoices has performed in prominent New York City concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, New York City Center, and Geffen Hall, under the batons of many esteemed conductors, including Serge Koussevitzky, Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, and Alan Gilbert. The company has also collaborated with world-class soloists, including Bryn Terfel, René Pape, Stephanie Blythe, Deborah Voigt, Eric Owens, Thomas Hampson, Kelli O’Hara, Paulo Szot and Victoria Clark. Because of its reputation for excellence, MasterVoices has been engaged by many top orchestras over the years, including the NBC Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic, and has been invited to appear abroad, in Israel and at the Verbier and Salzburg Festivals.

In August 2015, the organization transitioned from The Collegiate Chorale to MasterVoices, a name that better represents the current mission of the company as a performing arts organization that celebrates storytelling through the masterful voices of its chorus and world-class soloists, and the creative voices of composers, librettists, designers, and directors.

For more information, visit mastervoices.org. Connect with MasterVoices on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@mastervoicesny).

About Ted Sperling
One of today’s leading musical artists, Ted Sperling, Artistic Director of MasterVoices, has enjoyed a more-than-35-year career on the concert stage and in musical theater. A multi-faceted artist, he is known for his work as orchestrator, singer, pianist, violinist, violist, director, and music director. He has led the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Iceland Symphony, Czech National Symphony, and BBC Concert Orchestra, as well as New York City Opera and Houston Grand Opera, often working with leading singers from the opera and Broadway stage. For six seasons he served as Principal Conductor of the Westchester Philharmonic.

In New York, Sperling has conducted multiple concerts with the New York Philharmonic, for PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, the Lyrics and Lyricists series at the 92nd Street Y, and for Paul Taylor American Modern Dance. Recent performances with MasterVoices include a multimedia presentation of Handel’s Israel in Egypt; Orphic Moments which included a New York Premiere by composer Matthew Aucoin; a newly commissioned English translation of Bach’s St. John Passion; and Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera, The Grapes of Wrath.

Sperling’s 2018–2019 season includes a Bernstein concert at the Caramoor Music Festival; a Bernstein recital with soprano Isabel Leonard at the Kimmel Center and the Park Avenue Armory; an opera program with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Dublin; two film programs with San Francisco Symphony; and two programs with Stamford Symphony including Handel’s Messiah.

Mr. Sperling is the music director for My Fair Lady now playing at Lincoln Center Theater. He won the 2005 Tony and Drama Desk Awards for his orchestrations of The Light in the Piazza, for which he was also music director, and has numerous other Broadway credits, including the recent revivals of Fiddler on the Roof; The King and I; and South Pacific. He has conducted the scores for the films The Manchurian Candidate and Everything Is Illuminated, and directed the short film Love Mom, starring Tonya Pinkins. Sperling’s work as a stage director includes the world premieres of five musicals: Red Eye of Love, The Other Josh Cohen, See What I Wanna See, Charlotte: Life? Or Theater? and Striking 12, as well as a revival of Lady in the Dark.

In 2006, Sperling received the Ted Shen Family Foundation Award for leadership in musical theater. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, and received the Faculty Prize from The Juilliard School.