From B-minor Mass to Beethoven, Music of the Baroque to offer a varied season

Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 12:19 am

By Lawrence A. Johnson

Ludwig van Beethoven

Music of the Baroque will launch its fifth decade by venturing further into early Romantic repertoire than ever before, opening next season with works of Beethoven.

Also significant—and greatly heartening—is the news that MOB will maintain this season’s expansion to eight programs in 2011-2012, an ambitious move that clearly has paid off.

Jane Glover will open Music of the Baroque’s 41st season Oct. 2 with a program featuring Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Choral Fantasy and Symphony No. 1. In a rare Chicago appearance, Imogen Cooper will be the piano soloist in the Fantasy as well as Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466.

Next March, music director Glover will conduct a genuine rarity, Handel’s glorious L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, with sopranos Lisa Saffer and Elizabeth Futral, tenor Thomas Cooley and baritone Christopher Nomura as soloists.

In April Glover will lead performances of Bach’s epic Mass in B minor. And Glover will close the season with an offbeat, mostly concertante program titled “Friends,” offering music of Mozart, Haydn, Vanhal and von Dittersdorf, colleagues said to have performed string quartets together.

Nicholas Kraemer will once again helm three programs next season. In November MOB’s principal guest conductor leads a populist all-Bach evening featuring the Wedding Cantata with soprano Julia Doyle, the double violin concerto (soloists Robert Waters and Sharon Polifrone) and the Second and Third Orchestral Suites.

In January, Kraemer conducts a program of Handel and Haydn featuring the latter composer’s Symponies Nos. 31 (Horn Signal) and No. 98. And in February Kraemer will direct a wide-ranging lineup of Telemann, Vivaldi, Corelli, Purcell and Rameau.

MOB chorus master William Jon Gray will lead the traditional brass and choral holiday programs in December.

Subscriptions for Music of the Baroque’s 2011-2012 season are now available. Call 312-551-1414 or go online to baroque.org.

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