Chicago Master Singers opens its 2016-2017 season on Nov. 4 and 6 with an ensemble-premiere performance of one of the most challenging and ambitious works in its almost 40-year history, Ernest Bloch’s “Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service).”
“It is extremely difficult and calls for a large orchestra,” says conductor and music director Alan Heatherington. “Concert performances are fairly uncommon.”
This is what will make this season premiere different from all other of the esteemed ensemble’s season premieres. “We have done some large scale Jewish works in the past, but generally our repertoire is more geared toward large scale church music,” Heatherington said. “But this is absolutely a masterpiece that holds its own against any great choral music any composer has ever written.”
Bloch composed “Avodath Hakodesh” between 1930-33 for baritone, chorus and orchestra. The ensemble will be accompanied by the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra. The featured soloist is Cory Winter. A Chicago native now retired and living in California, Winter has served as Cantor for Conservative and Reform synagogues, including Deerfield-based B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim.
“In Jewish musical circles, ‘Avodath Hakodesh’ is the equivalent of the Bach ‘Mass in B minor’ or Beethoven’s ‘Missa solemnis,'” Heatherington said. “(While divided into five parts that textually mirror a Saturday morning service) it would be a stretch to do it liturgically. It’s an expansive work and violates some of the normal expectations of a traditional Saturday service as Bloch wanted the piece to be performed nonstop. When it is actually used in a service it has to be performed in shorter sections.”
More than eight decades after Bloch composed it, the message of “Avodath Hakodesh” continues to resonate, Heatherington said. “Bloch wrote his masterwork in between the World Wars, but in the European tinderbox that was about to explode, his major emphasis was for it to give a message of peace to all people. That’s a subject sadly that seems to be pertinent at all times but certainly in our time and certainly in the Middle East.”
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The program will also include Felix Mendelssohn’s musical settings of Psalms 42 and 114, “Lord Make Me an Instrument” from Stephen Paulus’s Grammy-Award-winning Prayers and Remembrances, and “I was glad” by C.H.H. Parry. Richard Boldrey, Northwestern University musical scholar and vocal coach, will present a free lecture one hour before each performance. Boldrey, who is the choir director at Lakeside Congregation for Reform Judaism in Highland Park, has conducted the piece and helped to prepare the Chicago Symphony Chorus in its performances some decades ago, Heatherington said.
“Avodath Hakodesh” is the type of ambitious piece Heatherington believes is essential to the Chicago Master Singers’ continued artistic growth and fulfilling the musical vision of Thomas Wikman, who founded the nonprofit ensemble in 1979 and led the group for a decade. Heatherington came to Chicago Master Singers initially as a guest conductor for one concert, he recalled. “It was love at first sight,” he said. Twenty-eight years later, he added, “It feels as though we’re still on our honeymoon.”
Chicago Master Singers
When: 7:30 pm Nov. 4 and 7 p.m. Nov. 6
Where: Chapel of the Holy Spirit, 2001 Waukegan Road, Techny
Tickets: $15 (with student discount) to $48. Senior and group discounts are also available.
Contact: www.chicagomastersingers.org or 1-877-825-5267.