The Washington University Chamber Orchestra will launch the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences’ 2005-06 season with an homage to the great Swedish singer Jenny Lind.
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WHO: Washington University Chamber Orchestra WHAT: Concert of Swedish music WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12 WHERE: Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge COST: Free and open to the public SPONSOR: Department of Music INFORMATION: (314) 935-4841 |
The concert, which is free and open to the public, begins at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge. The Women’s Building is located just north of Olin Library on the university’s Hilltop Campus. For more information call (314) 935-4841.
The Chamber Orchestra is led by Elizabeth Macdonald, director of strings, and comprises 25 undergraduate and graduate string players from the Hilltop campus.
Lind, widely known as “The Swedish Nightengale,” achieved great popularity in the mid 19th century for her unusually high voice. A performance in London in 1847 led Queen Victoria to record in her diary, “The great event of the evening was Jenny Lind’s appearance and her complete triumph. She has a most exquisite, powerful and really quite peculiar voice, so round, soft and flexible and her acting is charming and touching and very natural.” In 1850, P. T. Barnum sponsored Lind’s successful American tour.
The program will feature works by George Frideric Handel and Felix Mendelssohn that are known to have been part of Lind’s repertoire, along with several Swedish folk songs. Soprano Emily Heslop, music library assistant at Gaylord Music Library, is the featured artist.
The program also will feature a symphony by Johan Helmich Roman, the music master of Sweden’s royal chapel in the mid-18th century. The Swedish romantic tradition, which continued through the first half of the 20th century, will be represented in works by Ture Rangström and Hugo Alfvén. Neo-classicism of the same era is typified through the music of Dag Wirén.