News Release

Local angles: Cary, Goldsboro

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300-plus vocalists, musicians
to render Beethoven’s Ninth

CHAPEL HILL — One of Beethoven’s great masterpieces – Symphony No. 9, featuring Friedrich Schiller’s "Ode to Joy" – will be the centerpiece of an Oct. 28 concert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The 108-member UNC Symphony Orchestra and a 200-voice campus and community choir will perform the classic beginning at 8 p.m. in Memorial Hall. The concert is part of the 2005-2006 Carolina Performing Arts Series and marks the first major performance by UNC music department ensembles in Memorial since the hall’s three-year renovation and re-opening.

"The acoustics are wonderful," said Susan Klebanow, professor and director of choral activities in the department.

Never before in her 20 years at UNC have all the choirs on the program for Oct. 28 performed together: The Carolina Choir and the UNC Chamber Singers, which she directs; the UNC Men’s Glee Club directed by Dr. Daniel Huff, clinical associate professor; and the UNC Women’s Glee Club and Chapel Hill Community Chorus, both directed by Dr. Sue Klausmeyer, adjunct instructor.

About 90 percent of the singers will be students, said Klebanow.

"This will be a very unusual and exciting experience, just to be able to sing Beethoven’s Ninth, which is a very important work and not often performed by college students," she said. "Also, it will be a thrill to sing with 200 voices. The UNC Symphony is a large orchestra, and many voices are needed to balance the orchestral writing."

The UNC Wind Ensemble, directed by music professor Michael Votta, will open the program, performing Frank Ticheli’s "Pacific Fanfare" and Karel Husa’s "Music for Prague 1968." Then, after an intermission, the orchestra will begin Beethoven’s Ninth, a complex and challenging piece.

"Beethoven always taxed his performers to the extreme with very challenging writing," said Tonu Kalam, music professor and music director and conductor of the orchestra. "Endurance is a factor, as is the difficulty of the music."

The symphony, which Beethoven composed when he was deaf and completed in 1824, was the first in which a major composer introduced the human voice to symphonic form, Kalam said. Beethoven’s last symphony, it inspired succeeding generations of composers.

It is typical in its fast beginning, lively second movement, slow, lyrical third movement and big finale at the end, he said – but different in its length, about 70 minutes compared with the usual 30 for classical period symphonies. The choirs begin singing about 10 minutes into the 25-minute last movement. Singing with them will be four professional soloists who have performed "Ode to Joy":

• Jane Jennings, soprano, who has sung with major opera companies and symphonies nationwide and in Europe, including the Berkshire Opera Company, the New York City Opera and the American Symphony Orchestra, in venues including Carnegie Hall and the Wolf Trap Theater.
  
• Jane Dutton, mezzo-soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, who has performed with major opera companies and symphonies nationwide, including the New York Philharmonic, and in Carnegie Hall with the Oratorio Society of New York, singing Handel’s "Messiah" and the Bach "Magnificat."
  
• Carl Halvorson, tenor, a graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School, winner of the 1988 Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition for vocalists and performer with opera companies and symphonies across the nation and abroad.
  
• William Stone, bass-baritone, of Cary, a Goldsboro native who has sung with the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, other opera companies and orchestras nationwide and in Europe, including the major opera houses and Spoleto Festival of Italy. He teaches at Temple University.

UNC students – music majors and others – alumni, a professor and local musicians make up the orchestra, whose membership is open by audition only. That makes for an enthusiastic and highly motivated group, said Kalam.

"They are so excited about playing this piece," he said. "I told them, ‘This is not just another symphony, and not just another piece by Beethoven. This is an icon of Western culture – something really quite extraordinary."

Single tickets – $15 and $30 for the public and $10 for Carolina students – are available by phone at (919) 843-3333, or from the Memorial Hall box office on Cameron Avenue, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Carolina students should call the box office for purchasing information. Series subscriptions also are available.

On performance days, the box office is open from 10 a.m. until intermission. For more information, e-mail performingarts@unc.edu or visit www.unc.edu/performingarts.

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Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/memorial/north_carolina_symphony.jpg

Carolina Performing Arts Series contact: Jennifer Smith, (919) 966-3834 or jwsmith@unc.edu

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589