High Notes & High Tea
Chamber Music Series Number XXVIII

Music Times Two: An Afternoon of Duets


Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 4:00 P.M.
sacred heart Church 116 grove street in torrington


Sunday, february 21, 2010  at 4:00  P.M.
the Congregational Church of plainville 
 130 west Main Street in plainville

Music for Christmas rang in the Christmas season for both the New England Chamber Choir and its listeners.  Each year, Richard Wm. Donohue has selected from the finest music and poetry of the season.  From Gregorian chant to works freshly composed, each concert's repertoire spans sixteen centuries. The program for Music for Christmas XXXV followed this traditional pattern.

Mr. Donohue saluted each evening with the reading of Andrew Field’s “The Shepherd’s tale.”  Then, out of the silent, candlelit room, a Gregorian chant rose from the back of the hall. As the chant faded, the choir began a grand processional to the front of the hall singing “As With Gladness Men of Old.” The concert continued with a grand Magificat by Orlande de Lassus and works of Johannes Ockeghem, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Antonín Dvorák to celebrate the great mystery of Christ’s birth.  Small ensembles added detail and clarity to the rich full sound of the choir. A delightful surprise came as the young voices of the Treble Choir ring out from the back of the hall with “O Little town of Bethlehem.”  They too processed to the front and joined the choir for the remainder of the concert.  The audience itself joined the choir in singing “On This Day Earth Shall Ring” while the entire ensemble filed into the aisles.  As the final notes of the soprano descant resounded, the room once again fell into silence.  And then, the most magical moment of the evening: a solo voice began the original setting of Stille Nacht by Franz Gruber. The concert ended as all seventy voices exclaimed the final words of this beautiful piece, “Jesus der Retter ist da.”           Christmas had arrived.

An article about Richard Wm. Donohue and his work with the New England Chamber Choir over the past 35 years was published in the Hartford Courant on Monday, November 16.