Alexander Cann will see his fifteenth season main Hamilton’s Bach Elgar Choir as their Creative Director throughout 2024/25 — the 119th season for the choir itself. They’ll be opening with a presentation of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast, a not often carried out work, on November 23.
It’s in step with Cann’s imaginative method to season programming, which has included Canadian folksongs, music from WWI, and different intriguing themes, together with the choir’s conventional focus.
LvT spoke to Cann about Alexander’s Feast, and main a Hamilton establishment.
Creative Director Alexander Cann
Alexander Cann started learning music formally on the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, adopted by an undergraduate diploma from McMaster College (B.A.).
He was nonetheless 19, and in his second yr at McMaster, when his piano enjoying began to draw consideration. Alexander was requested to function musical director for a campus manufacturing of A Little Night time Music by Sondheim, and it labored out so nicely, it led to 2 extra exhibits whereas he was nonetheless at college. He gained conducting expertise with the McMaster College Choir.
After McMaster, he accomplished an M.Mus. diploma at McGill College, the place he continued to check conducting. After finishing his research in Montreal, he went on to carry positions on the Shaw Pageant, and with Tapestry Opera, amongst others, earlier than touchdown at Bach Elgar.
In the present day, together with main the Bach Elgar Choir, he additionally serves as Director of Music with Melrose United Church in Hamilton.
The Bach Elgar Choir: A Transient Historical past
The ensemble was based below the title The Elgar Choir in 1905 by Bruce Carey, who led the group till 1922. Carey, a baritone and instructor in addition to a conductor, studied in London, Munich and Florence, and have become a choirmaster at a sequence of Hamilton church buildings earlier than founding the choir.
The choir noticed early success, and had a repute for performing excellence. After the Second World Conflict, in 1946, the choir merged wth the Bach Choir to turn into the group as it’s recognized immediately.
Together with Bach and Elgar, below Cann, the group has included a concentrate on the key works of Mozart to its common programming. The venerable group typically groups up with the Hamilton Philharmonic in its live performance shows.
Alexander Cann: The Interview
What’s it like main an establishment that’s anchored the choral neighborhood within the metropolis for thus lengthy? “I might say, it actually enters into our self picture, as a result of Hamiltonians remind us about it,” says Cann. The choir is actually well-known within the metropolis and area. “We’re a live performance choir and we have now that historical past on the town.”
He mentions the group’s continuity locally, with a tech who’s a grand niece of one of many choir’s unique members, and choir members whose grandparents additionally sang in Bach Elgar.
“It’s acquired a singular through-line presence.”
As he factors out, when it was fashioned, it was one among solely two live performance choirs in the whole area, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir having been fashioned in 1894.
“Traditionally, it’s fairly in contrast to different choirs on the time,” he says. The choir discovered prepared audiences all through the realm and past, and toured often in its early many years all through the area, together with america. “Their first concert events have been within the winter — February solely,” Alexander says, “hoop skirts and all. The images are improbable. We care about our historical past and we learn our historical past.”
Often that respect for his or her historical past informs his programming, as in a latest live performance the place the choir carried out the primary piece they’d ever sung in public, and an early fee by composer Nathaniel Dett from 1917 that they’ve carried out a number of instances in recent times.
“We’re related to our historical past.”
Handel: Alexander’s Feast
The November live performance could be the first time Alexander’s Feast has been offered within the space. “I don’t assume it’s ever been offered round right here,” Cann says.
A musical ode set to a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton, Alexander’s Feast (HWV 75), was written to have fun Saint Cecilia’s Day (historically November 22). Saint Cecilia was a virgin martyr of the early church, and she or he is the patron saint of music.
Handel composed the work in 1736, and it premiered at London’s Covent Backyard in February of that yr. Alexander’s Feast units a scene between Alexander the Nice and his mistress Thaïs, who’ve a feast within the metropolis of Persepolis, a metropolis he’d captured. Timotheus, a musician, sings and performs the lyre, and evokes varied feelings in Alexander till they rise to a boiling level, and he resolves to burn the town down in revenge for his Greek comrades fallen within the battle.
The piece was so profitable that it inspired Handel to make the change from Italian operas to English choral works — a choice that will cement his place in Western music historical past.
As the primary such work of Handel’s, nevertheless, it’s typically missed by presenters and programmers in favour of the oratorios and different later works he would turn into well-known for.
“The factor about Alexander’s Feast is that it’s proper in that first […] sequence of works — St. Matthew’s Ardour by Bach 1727, Handel’s in 1736,” Cann factors out. “It’s sort of the primary actually grand scale orchestral works.”
Alexander’s Feast is the outlier as a secular work, one which was meant as a live performance piece. “There wasn’t something earlier than that that would actually be referred to as a live performance piece for orchestra and choir,” he feedback.
The unique story of Alexander’s feast incorporates a political subplot about problems with its time, some 4 many years earlier than Handel set music to it. “There’s implicit in Alexander’s Feast a political subplot,” Cann notes. “Handel takes the story and eliminates the political overtones. The political insinuations are to a sure extent washed away.”
Handel’s work turned extra related to a renewed sense of British nationalism. It was additionally, regardless of the notion of Saint Cecilia, a public and secular celebration. “It’s the start of secular arts.”
In the present day’s viewers members can respect a bit with quite a lot of temper that vary type like to rage to pity.
The Bach Elgar Choir 2024/25 Season
The remainder of their season contains Handel’s Messiah in December with conductor James S. Kahane and the Hamilton Philharmonic.
“It’s attention-grabbing doing the Messiah after Alexander’s Feast,” Cann notes. “You see the place stuff is coming from,” he notes. The composer’s improvement in the way in which he makes use of the voices of the choir, and different parts, distinction from the sooner to the later work.
Their first live performance of 2025 is titled The Trial of Gilbert & Sullivan, together with a staged model of the long-lasting duo’s comedian masterpiece, Trial By Jury, on its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. It builds on a Gilbert & Sullivan present the choir carried out again in 2018. “It was such nice enjoyable, I believed, we will take this to the following step.”
It’s additionally excellent repertoire for a non-professional choir, which can have issue attaining the composer’s intentions with regards to difficult opera choruses. “They wrote it for bel canto singers,” he factors out. Operetta provides a mix of extra and fewer difficult components.
Martin and Brahms, over two nights, closes the season on Could 31 and June 1, that includes Frank Martin’s a cappella Mass for Double Choir, and Brahms’ Ziegeunerlieder.
“Frank Martin’s piece is tough and difficult,” he says. “The choristers must know their onions. It requires a assured musical refrain. I programmed it as a result of I believed the choir was prepared.”
The piece is a continuation of French works the choir has been constructing into its repertoire over the previous couple of years. It’s an initiative that was first sparked by the burning of the cathedral of Notre Dame in 2019, however has taken on a lifetime of its personal. “It connects over the seasons.”
He factors out that the HPO’s new conductor, James S. Kahane, can also be French by start, and has an curiosity in French repertoire. Engaged on items in a multi-year mode helps develop the choir’s expertise and familiarity with particular person kinds. “I like to try this,” he says.
Alexander’s Feast: Live performance Particulars
The Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra will accompany the Bach Elgar Choir.
“They’re crackerjack,” Cann says. “It’s one other degree of professionalism.”
Soloists embrace Bethany Hörst (soprano), Owen McCausland (tenor), and Chris Palmer (baritone).
He notes that soprano Bethany Hörst is on the school on the College of Western Ontario. “She’s grown right into a assured artist,” he says. He additionally factors out that tenor Owen McCauslin is in demand everywhere in the world.
“It’s fairly cool working with artists of that calibre.”
Baritone Chris Palmer can also be a jazz guitarist, and an alumnus of Bach Elgar. “He has turn into a very wonderful classical baritone,” Alexander says.
“I’m actually happy with that solid.”
- Discover extra particulars and tickets for the efficiency, and take a look at the remainder of the 2024/25 season, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
