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1 Review(s) Total
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Michel Couzijn says:
On Wednesday 9/3/03 10:39 AM
If you are looking for a new, challenging but highly rewarding acapella choral piece, I can recommend Frank Ferko's Stabat Mater (1998; about 55 minutes). My (amateur) chamber choir has just pulled it off here in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and we are very happy with the result. The work keeps a good balance between modernism and traditional musical language. Thus in spite of its young age the piece communicates well with the audience. We combined it with Fauré's Requiem (an audience pleaser like few others) and guess what: after the concert most people (family, friends, colleagues, you know how it goes) were talking about Ferko's music (and positively! ;-).
Ferko's Stabat Mater consists of twenty-five, quite small parts (1 to 4 minutes), in which many musical techniques are used to convey the sorrow, suffering, and trusting hope of the mother who must see her child die. There are (facultative) interpolations (and one song cycle) for dramatic soprano, on English texts, in which the topic is connected with present day occasions of parents who lose a child because of violence, illness, war.
I think that this work deserves a place in the standard repertoire for ambitious choirs. Its difficulty is in the same league as Frank Martin's Mass for Double CHoir, or Poulenc's Figure Humaine. So you need singers who can really hold their own - but good amateurs will do well enough, if I (amateur) may say so.
Michel Couzijn VU-Kamerkoor, Amsterdam
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NOTICE: This is NOT the OFFICIAL Frank Ferko website. These reviews are a forum for opinions about the venue that other Centerstage Chicago users may want to know, not to order merchandise, apply for a job, etc.
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