David Hoose, Music Director of The Cantata Singers, Boston, talks to Michael Miller, with a Season Preview

The Cantata Singers of Boston will begin their 2009-10 season on November 6 at Jordan Hall with a concert combining:

Heinrich Schütz, Musikalische Exequien (1636)
Hugo Distler, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, Op. 12, no. 1 from Geistliche Chormusik
Arnold Schoenberg, Friede auf Erden
J.S. Bach, Cantata BWV 8,
“Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?”

Click here to listen to The Berkshire Review Podcast II: David Hoose Talks to Michael Miller (ca. 23 min.)

Click here for Michael Miller’s review of the concert.

This thoughtful and lively program of Baroque and modern music is typical of the Cantata Singers, who in recent years have been building their season programs around a single composer, this year Heinrich Schütz, the greatest predecessor of the central figure in the group’s mission, Johann Sebastian Bach.

This gave me an opportunity to continue our podcast series in conversation with David Hoose, the Cantata Singers’ Music Director for the past 26 years. Since then Mr. Hoose has been one of the central figures in the Boston music scene. He is also director of the contemporary music group Collage and director of orchestral activities at Boston University’s School of Music. He has also conducted Auros, Alea III, Dinosaur Annex, Fromm Chamber Players and the Brandeis Contemporary Players. In 2005, Mr. Hoose was awarded the 2005 Alice M. Ditson Conductors Award, given in recognition of his exceptional commitment to the performance of American Music, and whose list of past recipients includes Bernstein, Previn, Ormandy, and Stokowski. Maestro Hoose was recently awarded the 2008 Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award from Choral Arts New England.

His reputation goes far beyond Boston. From 1993 to 2005, he was Music Director of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, conducting works ranging from Bach and Haydn to Mahler and Picker. During his tenure with the orchestra, the City of Tallahassee named a week after him in recognition of his contributions to the cultural life of the region. He has conducted the Chicago Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony, Utah Symphony, Korean Broadcasting Symphony (KBS), Orchestra Regionale Toscana (Florence), Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony, Opera Festival of New Jersey, and at the Warebrook, New Hampshire, Monadnock and Tanglewood music festivals. In Boston he has appeared as guest conductor with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Handel & Haydn Society, Back Bay Chorale, Chorus Pro Musica, and many times both with the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and with Emmanuel Music.

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The Cantata Singers Season Program, 2009-10:

November 6 at 8pm

Heinrich Schütz, Musikalische Exequien (1636)
Hugo Distler, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, Op. 12, no. 1 from Geistliche Chormusik
Arnold Schoenberg, Friede auf Erden
J.S. Bach, Cantata BWV 8,
“Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?”

The power and timelessness of Schütz’s music is on display in his Musikalische Exequien – music that stands near the top of the master’s creations. Coupled with one of Bach’s most serenely beautiful, warm and immensely humane cantatas, and Hugo Distler’s exhilarating Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, Arnold Schoenberg’s transcendent, visionary Friede auf Erden completes the program – a plea for peace that has moved our audiences every time we have performed it. It is time again.

January 15 at 8pm

John Harbison, “We do not live to ourselves”
“My little children, let us not love in word”
Heinrich Schütz, Psalm 116, “Das ist mir lieb” (1623)
Maurice Duruflé, Requiem

After decades, Cantata Singers returns to Schütz’s sublime setting of Psalm 116, coupled with the music of John Harbison, a composer whose 
own thought owes much to the older master. A complementary pairing, capped by the sublimely mysterious and serene Requiem of Duruflé – a first for Cantata Singers, and a must-hear concert!

March 12 at 8pm

Claudio Monteverdi, Laetatus sum
Heinrich Schütz, motets from Cantiones sacrae 1625
Francis Poulenc, Mass in G
Igor Stravinsky, Mass
Heinrich Schütz, motets from Symphoniae sacrae III 1650
Claudio Monteverdi, Gloria a 7 voci

Join Cantata Singers as we delight in unexpected and vibrant associations. Schütz’s influence was long and broad, but there are many composers who weren’t particularly influenced by him, but who still thrive in his company. Monteverdi exerted his influence on young Schütz, as well as Stravinsky – two hundred years later, and Poulenc fell completely under the seductive spell of Stravinsky. But Poulenc and Schütz? An evening of musical miracles and splendid surprises!

May 14 at 8pm

Heinrich Schütz, Opus ultimum – Schwanengesang:
Psalm 119
Psalm 100
Deutsches Magnificat

We close the season with Schütz’s culminating work, his deeply felt reflection on a very full and rich eighty-six years. Nothing small, efficient or inward, but rather a swansong of monumental scope and imagination – two four-voice choruses, instruments and continuo, in thirteen motets filling a full, concentrated evening. The Schwanengesang burns with youthful vigor, incredible invention, and thrillingly refined drama. There is no evidence that Schütz himself ever heard a performance of this work, but Cantata Singers offers you a very, very rare opportunity to experience this artist’s final, brilliant reflection on life, in its glorious, astounding whole.