Luigi Cherubini is a gem
Boulder Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Chorale collaborate on Requiem by the overlooked composer
by Peter Alexander
M
aria Luigi Carlo Zenobio are out there that would fit the stage that Salvatore Cherubini just may we perform on. Additionally our mission be the most influential classihas always been to bring little gems in cal composer you have never music into our audience’s ears. After lisheard of. tening to this piece I recommended it to As director of the Paris Conservatoire Vicki [Burrichter] and she was very enthufor 20 years (1822-42) and author of an siastic about performing it.” important textbook on counterpoint, he The Requiem was first performed in influenced a generation of younger musi- 1817 for a mass in memory of King Louis cians. His many operas and his church XVI, who was executed at the height of works were widely performed PUBLIC DOMAIN and admired in his lifetime. In particular his Requiem in C minor — which will be performed Saturday, Feb. 15, by the Boulder Chamber Orchestra and Boulder Chamber Choir — was admired by Beethoven, who asked that it be performed at his funeral. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful piece,” says Vicki Burrichter, director of the Boulder Chamber Choir who is preparing the chorus for the performance. “Cherubini’s really extraordinary and was admired by Beethoven and Schumann and Brahms. I think he should be performed a lot more often.” Bahman Saless, the conductor of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra who will lead the performance, agrees. He writes by email from Prague, where he is travel- the French Revolution in 1793. It is a ing as a conductor, “What I would like our unique work in that it is for chorus only, audience to take away from this concert with no soloists. “It is highly unusual not is that there were many contemporaries to have soloists in a Requiem,” Burrichter of Beethoven and Mozart who were over- says. “I can’t even think of another one.” shadowed by the presence of these For Burrichter, that is more of a featitans. Some of them deserve some light ture than a shortcoming. “It is a fantastic to shine on them.” opportunity for the chorus to do everyFor the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, thing with the orchestra and have that the selection of the Cherubini Requiem opportunity to shine,” she says. “And a was partly practical because the ensemchorus can do anything, right? I’m sort of ble is not large enough to perform larger joking but not really.” scale works including the Brahms Cherubini wrote for the chorus to proGerman Requiem or the Verdi Requiem. vide the contrast and lyrical moments that “We have had so much success perform- soloists often create in large choral ing Mozart’s Requiem, and to me the works. For example, the Dies Irae (“Day marriage between orchestra and choir in of wrath”) movement has one of the most many ways is the perfect union,” Saless dramatic texts of all choral music. That writes. movement, Burrichter says, “is extremely “I was very curious what other pieces dramatic, as only a big chorus can do, BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
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ON THE BILL: Luigi Cherubini: Requiem in C minor, presented by Boulder Chamber Orchestra with the Boulder Chamber Chorale. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, First United Methodist Church, 1421 Spruce St., Boulder, boulderchamberorchestra.com
and then there are sections where he puts just the men or just the women singing these long beautiful solo-type lines.” Elsewhere, “There’s a lot of contrast. There are movements like the opening Kyrie that is mostly pianissimo and piano and very, very hushed, very moving. So there’s a lot of drama in this piece,” she says. That is the other aspect of the Requiem that Burrichter finds compelling: it reflects the composer’s operatic sense of drama. Cherubini was, from the beginning, a very successful opera composer. “It’s got a real story, and he’s a dramatic storyteller,” she says. “That comes through very clearly, which is very exciting. This is what we love about Italian opera, so if you love Italian opera, you will love the Cherubini.” Written in 1817, the Requiem falls in between the restrained classical style of Haydn and Mozart and the more emotional 19th-century Romantic style, and it can be performed either way, with large, powerful Romantic forces or a small, transparent Classical ensembles. “Because this is a chamber orchestra and chamber choir of around 35 singers, we’re heading more toward the classical style of performance,” Burrichter says. “Then we’re going to put in elements of the Romantic period, with big drama in the movements where it fits. We’re coming up with our own interpretation out of that.” She sees the Cherubini score in the context of other dramatic settings of the Requiem. “I think that the piece has resonances with all of those [other works] — the Mozart Requiem, the Verdi Requiem, the Brahms Requiem. If an audience member loves any of those pieces, then this is a piece that they should hear, because it’s going to become their new favorite Requiem. “I can guarantee that.” FEBRUARY 13, 2020
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