‘Strings & Voices’ lift in plea for peace
Throughout the New Mexico Philharmonic’s Saturday concert flows a plea for peace.
The 60-member choral group Coro Lux (“Chorus of Light”) will join the musicians on “Passionate Strings & Voices” at St. Paul Lutheran Church. The concert will feature three emotional masterworks: Barber’s celebrated and haunting “Adagio for Strings,” Mozart’s Missa brevis in G Major and contemporary British composer Laura Rossi’s “Voices of Remembrance” commemorating World War I.
“There is a whole lot of choral music in the world,” Coro Lux artistic director and conductor Bradley Ellingboe said. “We thought we’d talk about peace.”
Mozart wrote his brief Mass when he was just 11. The concert will feature four soloists.
“It’s masterful; it’s charming,” Ellingboe said. “If I hadn’t told you he wrote it at 11, you’d know it was Mozart. It’s amazing; he was such a genius.”
Rossi penned her “Voices of Remembrance” inspired by 10 well-known World War I poems.
“She’s … written a lot of film music,” Ellingboe said. “She had a great-uncle who served, and she found his diaries. All the poetry is by British men who were killed in World War I. They were kids; they were 17-18.
“I think it’s very attractive music. There are certain movie music qualities to what she does that makes it accessible. It’s evocative and wistful.”
Narrators will read some of the poetry; the rest is sung.
“There’s a particularly dramatic poem where they’re marching along and suddenly it’s the whisk of shells and it’s mustard gas and they struggle to put on their masks,” Ellingboe said. “It does remind us that we sent teenagers into this hell that was World War I.
“I think we need to find peaceful solutions to our ever-more polarized world.”
Soloists include soprano Rebecca Brunette; mezzosoprano Kim Kraut; tenor Jonathan Davidson and bass Alfredo Beltran. Spencer Beckwith and Liz McMaster are narrators.
Now retired, Ellingboe was the University of New Mexico director of choral activities, music professor and regents lecturer.