The May Festival, the oldest choral festival in the western hemisphere, celebrates its 150th anniversary this month, celebrating community choral singing that has drawn international acclaim.
As principal conductor and music director Juanjo Mena drew up the anniversary programs, he says the festival’s heritage was his inspiration.
“It has always been a combination of maintaining the May Festival’s strong choral traditions while also looking to the future,” Mena told CityBeat. “So many important choral works received their U.S. premieres as early as 1875, like the Bach Magnificat in D major. We also look forward, so commissioning new works was a priority for me.
The 2023 season fulfills Maestro Mena’s goals, offering classic choral works paired with three commissioned pieces by American composers, all of whom celebrate the joys of singing in their works. The festival concludes with the choral extravaganza known as Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony, the “Symphony of a Thousand.”
World-class conductors and soloists are scheduled but the genuine stars are the 120 volunteers who make up the May Festival Chorus and who appear at each concert.
The festival opens on May 19 with the Bach Magnificat and two world premieres from James MacMillan and James Lee III, conducted by Maestro Mena.
MacMillan’s Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia is based on a poem by 17th century British poet John Dryden celebrating three characters associated with music. The work, lasting about twenty minutes, is scored for a large orchestra and different choral ensembles.
MacMillan served as creative partner for the 2019 May Festival and said his experiences here deeply influenced his composition which was completed last year.
“Although this poem is of another time and dimension I was struck by its breadth and ambition to explore the transformative nature of music from a number of different angles,” MacMillan said. “Its final suggestion that music might be a sacred thing, of heavenly concerns, is an idea which will never fade, being as vital now as it was in the eras of the three characters and Dryden.”
Lee III turned to biblical sources, public domain texts and texts provided by members of the May Festival Youth Chorus for Breaths of Universal Longings.
“I started with the concept of God breathing life into the first human and then humanity began to rise, breathe and sing,” he said. “As the work progresses, the idea of life being a song of joy is presented as a desire. It’s lost and returns in the final movement. The texts from the Youth Chorus worked very well. The first part of the text asks ‘Where is the song?’ and ‘Where is our joy?’”
Breaths concludes in what Lee describes as “an explosive manner.”
“Near the end of the composition, the melodic and rhythmic elements are quite energetic in both the orchestra and the emphatic singing of ‘joy’ in the chorus, building to the climax and the final chord in the orchestra.”
The following evening acclaimed American conductor Marin Alsop makes her May Festival debut with a program of American works from Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and a reprise performance of Robert Nathaniel Dett’s groundbreaking oratorio The Ordering of Moses.
Dett’s masterpiece premiered at the 1937 May Festival. The orchestra and chorus traveled to Carnegie Hall for a performance broadcast live on NBC radio. The transmission was suddenly cut off, due to calls from racist listeners. The May Festival’s triumphant 2014 performance led by James Conlon was followed by another Carnegie Hall appearance which was recorded on Bridge Records.
On May 25, conductor laureate Conlon returns to lead Mozart’s Requiem and the world premiere of Julia Adolphe’s commissioned work Crown of Hummingbirds.
Adolphe collaborated with Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair to create a work that “celebrates and honors this incredible organization,” Adolphe told CityBeat. “The hummingbird’s movement can be heard throughout, first by a dark, urgent hum in the lower strings, taken up by humming in the women’s voices. The work’s conclusion evokes the birds’ joyful soaring in flight with multilayered textures that surround and support the singers.”
These world premieres create special challenges for the May Festival Chorus, which the Director of Choruses Robert Porco readily acknowledges.
“Each new piece has its own musical language which we learn not just by studying the notes and the marking but also understanding the character the composer created,” Porco said. “Singers are provided with substantial rehearsal tools including audio recordings of individual voice parts and combined parts for home study.”
Porco adds that pieces like the Bach Magnificat and the Mozart Requiem are in the chorus’s DNA, thanks to more frequent performances. But even familiar pieces need rehearsals and the Festival’s concluding work is no exception.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 is known as Symphony of a Thousand. The onstage forces at Music Hall will be smaller but impressive: 230 singers, 8 soloists and 120 orchestral musicians. The May Festival Chorus will be joined by the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, the May Festival Youth Chorus, Cincinnati Boychoir and Cincinnati Youth Choir.
The greatly expanded ensembles underscore Mahler’s vision of universal redemption through love. The symphony’s first part is inspired the medieval Christian hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” (Come, Creator Spirit), and the second part sets the text of Goethe’s final scene from his epic poem “Faust.”
It will be a bittersweet moment for Mena: this performance marks his first time leading this epic work and his final performance as the May Festival’s music director. He has prepared choruses for previous performances elsewhere but this will be his first time on the podium.
“This symphony has at its heart an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit, which is so poignant now, following the frustration, doubts and fear we experienced during the pandemic,” Mena said. “The sheer scale of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is our reason for concluding our monumental 150th anniversary season with this work. I can’t wait to hear the full forces singing together ‘Veni, veni creator spiritus!’ for the first time!”
For more information about the May Festival, visit mayfestival.com.
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This article appears in Apr 19 – May 2, 2023.
