GMChorale to Present Concert in Middletown on November 9
GMChorale will present Brahm’s “Liebeslieder Waltzes,” as well as contemporary pieces by James Mulholland, Morten Lauridsen and Shawn Kirchner, at the Santo Fragilio Performing Arts Center at Middletown High School on Sunday, November 9, 2025, at 4:00 p.m. Each composer selected poetry that found its way into the music featured in GMChorale’s mainstage concert, “Love, Waltzes and Luminous Skies.” The selected pieces are connected in a variety of ways: musically, texturally, stylistically and thematically.
When Johannes Brahms composed his Liebeslieder Waltzes (Opus 52 and Opus 65), he turned for inspiration to Georg Friedrich Daumer’s Polydora, a collection of folksongs exploring the varied aspects of romantic love – longing, flirtation, devotion, tenderness, and sorrow, to name a few. Brahms introduces us to 32 of these poems and ends with a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that sums up the pain and joy of love.
Five short thematically connected pieces have been added to the program. The Elm City Girls’ Choir will be singing “Dirait-on,” Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem set to music by Morten Lauridsen. GMChorale continues with a James Mulholland arrangement from his composition “Four Robert Burns Ballads.” “My love is like a red, red rose,” the first line of a ballad by the 18th Century poet Robert Burns, speaks of love and steadfast devotion. James Agee, a mid-20th Century screenwriter, film critic, and author, whose poem “Sure on this Shining Night” was set to music by Morten Lauridsen, offers an assurance of kindness in the luminous skies of night. For Shawn Kirschner’s arrangement of “Bright Morning Stars,” a tribute to familial love, he turns to a traditional Appalachian song. Finally, a hymn text by John Adam Granade (1763-1807), a preacher active in the Great Revival in the West two centuries ago, is set to new music in Shawn Kirchner’s “Sweet Rivers,” which extols a redeeming love.
Join us on Sunday, November 9, 2025, for this celebration of “Love, Waltzes and Luminous Skies,” under the baton of Artistic Director Joseph D’Eugenio. The Elm City Girls’ Choir will join GMChorale on stage, with Eric Trudel and Blake Hansen on piano. The concert begins at 4:00pm, but plan to arrive early to hear a 3:00pm lecture by Neely Bruce, which is included in the ticket price. Tickets are available online at www.gmchorale.org