FALL 2011 (44th Concert Season)
"Holiday Magic" with the
Imperial Symphony Orchestra
December 6, 2011
7:30pm - Youkey Theater, The Lakeland Center
Adults $20.00, Students 12 and older free with Student ID (click here to purchase tickets)
Join us for our holiday concert at the Lakeland Center – we'll perform the wonderful carol settings of Robert Shaw with the masterful ISO. Difficult, lovely, and rewarding.
"A Celebration of Polk County in Story and Song" - October 17
7:30pm - Bartow Civic Center
Free Admission
Come celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Polk County with the Lakeland Choral Society at the Bartow Civic Center - with music from the early days of Florida. Featuring baritone soloist Christopher Kline, NFMC national award winner best male vocalist and past recipient of the LCS Lee Ross Memorial Scholarship, with guest appearances by the Phillip O'Brien Elementary School Children's Choir directed by Deborah Zahner, and local story-teller Shannon Pierce. The program will provide a taste of Polk's rich cultural history, from folksong to gospel to lore to music of recent times.
SPRING 2011 (43rd Concert Season)
On Sunday, April 10, 2011, Lakeland Choral Society performed the ethereal Requiem by Maurice Duruflé, and Beethoven’s eloquent Mass in C.
This concert was held from 4:00 to 6:00 PM at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Lakeland, Florida. Tickets were $15.00 for adults and $5.00 for students under 15.
The concert was conducted by Dr. Larry Sledge, Music Director of the Lakeland Choral Society since 1989, and was accompanied by Sue Fee on organ, along with a small orchestra.
We requested that concert-goers bring with them a non-perishable food item to donate to VISTE, Volunteers in Service to the Elderly.
St. Paul Lutheran Church is located at 4450 Harden Boulevard, Lakeland, FL 33813. For driving directions, please click on the image to the right to open up an interactive map.
About the Music
Mass in C, Op. 86 by Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Mass in C major, Op. 86, to a commission from Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II in 1807. In fulfilling this commission, Beethoven was extending a tradition established by Joseph Haydn, who following his return from England in 1795 had composed one mass per year for the Esterházy family, to celebrate the name day of the Prince's wife. Haydn had ceased this tradition with the failure of his health in 1802.
Prince Nikolaus did not appreciate the mass, causing Beethoven to leave his house in a rage. Charles Rosen, in his The Classical Style, has called the episode Beethoven's "most humiliating public failure". The mass is appreciated by critics (such as Rosen), but is probably one of the least often performed of Beethoven's larger works.
Of the work, Michael Moore writes "While [it] is often overshadowed by the immense Missa Solemnis, written some fifteen years later, it has a directness and an emotional content that the latter work sometimes lacks." The widely-read Penguin Guide to Compact Discs (2004 edition) forthrightly calls the work a "long-underrated masterpiece."
Requiem, Op. 9 by Maurice Duruflé
Composed in 1947 in memory of Duruflé’s father, the Requiem is regarded by many as among the most serene and meditative treatments of the Latin text. The same year, Marie-Madeleine Chevalier became his assistant at St-Étienne-du-Mont. They married in 1953. The couple became a famous and popular organ duo, going on tour together several times throughout the sixties and early 1970's.
At the time of commission, Duruflé was working on an organ suite using themes from Gregorian chants. He incorporated his sketches for that work into the Requiem, which uses numerous themes from the Gregorian Mass for the Dead. Nearly all the thematic material in the work comes from chant.
Duruflé was highly critical of his own composition. He only published a handful of works and often continued to edit and change pieces after publication. The result of this perfectionism is that his music, especially his organ music, holds a very high position in the repertoire. The Requiem is hailed by many critics as his masterpiece.