Indian Hill artistic director and conductor Bruce Hangen leads a Harvard Pro Musica rehearsal. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Harmony Mass” and Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” were written almost 130 years apart and are composed in wildly different styles, but they will share the bill on Sunday, Feb. 26, when Harvard Pro Musica will join forces with the Nashoba Valley Chorale to take the stage with the Orchestra of Indian Hill, a professional group based in Littleton.
The Stravinsky piece, written in 1930, especially represents a challenge for the members of the Harvard Pro Musica.
“The classical [Haydn piece] is a musical language that most musicians understand, and so can assimilate, learn, and get into the voice more easily, but the Stravinsky is a language of its own,” said Harvard Pro Musica musical director Mark Bennett. “…Its language is very challenging for singers. Just hearing it is harder for singers, for the average singer to get to the point.” But, Bennett said, “It’s very powerful music when it all comes together.”
And as rehearsals progress, Bennett and Indian Hill artistic director and conductor Bruce Hangen expect it will all come together.
“They’re doing spectacular work,” Hangen said last Tuesday, the day after the second of three scheduled combined rehearsals of the Pro Musica and Nashoba Valley Chorale. “It just feels really good.”
Harvard Pro Musica is made up of about 45 to 50 singers from communities including Harvard, Acton, Ayer, Bolton, Boxborough, Concord, Lancaster, Leominster, Lunenburg, and Shirley. Bennett has been conducting the group since 2005.
The idea of a collaboration between the community volunteer-based chorale groups and the professional orchestra has been percolating for a few years now. At one point the idea was to have a choral festival with several local groups participating, Hangen said, but due to the difficult logistics of organizing such an event, the focus was narrowed to include just the Harvard Pro Music and the Nashoba Valley Chorale.
Singers focus on their scores at a rehearsal.
Bennett said he and Nashoba Valley Chorale director Anne Watson Born pursued the arrangement because, among other reasons, groups like theirs don’t often get the opportunity to work with professional orchestras, and doing so opens the door to grander, more complicated choral works.
“We don’t get the chance to do this kind of literature except under these specific circumstances,” Bennett said.
The new opportunity, however, comes with new challenges. For one, the rehearsal schedule is compressed. Typically, Bennett said, Pro Musica dedicates 10 to 12 rehearsals to preparing for a concert. This time around it’s less than half that, especially with the full group.
“It’s both more difficult music and in a shorter period of time, so [the choir members] have to learn things more quickly and be more independent,” Bennett said.
But, he said, part of his thinking in taking on this concert was to challenge the members, as a “stretching experience.”
“In a terrified, terrified way, they’re enjoying it,” Bennett said. “I happen to believe, and I think many of the chorus members do too, that this kind of undertaking is a rarity, and the opportunity to do it doesn’t come all that often. While I say they’re terrified by it, they’re also very excited by it.”
Then there is that Stravinksy piece.
“I would say that classical music, which most of our singers are familiar with, has a predictable directionality to it; you can anticipate where it’s going to go,” Bennett said. “Stravinsky doesn’t give us that same predictability in determining where it’s going to go…It’s a whole different world, really, of sonority, of sound.”
That’s not to say the Haydn Mass is a walk in the choral park. Though it might be stylistically more familiar to the singers, its hour-long length represents an endurance challenge.
“It’s a big program,” Hangen said. “It’s a standard symphony concert, so we’re talking close to two hours of music.”
That’s two hours of music and about 120 performers sharing the stage at the Littleton High School Performing Arts Center.
“I think our biggest challenge will be finding enough square footage on the stage to put everybody,” Hangen said.
If all goes well, Bennett said, he hopes this concert will the first of many that bring together area choirs with the Orchestra of Indian Hill.
“That was the whole reason that Ann [Born] and I started meeting with Bruce and the people at Indian Hill, because we felt that it was time that many of the organizations in the region begin to collaborate more,” he said. “Ann and I were quite adamant, and several other directors are quite interested as well, in establishing a tradition of doing large works with Indian Hill.”
The Choral Spectacular with the Orchestra of Indian Hill featuring Harvard Pro Musica and the Nashoba Valley Chorale is on Sunday, Feb. 26, at 3 p.m. at the Littleton High School Performing Arts Center, 56 King St., Littleton. For tickets, call 978-486-9524 or visit www.indianhillmusic.org.
