Young Auditorium Holiday Season: Vienna Choir Boys
Released: October 24, 2005
Angel voices could not sound sweeter than the Vienna Choir Boys who will entertain audience members at UW-Whitewater’s Young Auditorium on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 at 7:30 pm.
The evening’s repertoire includes in the first half pieces by Purcell, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven and others. The second half of the program will consist of holiday music including, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Adeste Fideles, Noel, Deck the Hall, and Let It Snow. It’s sure to be a delightful start to anyone’s holiday season.
The Vienna Choir Boys are more than half a millennium old, and can trace their beginnings to 1498 in the court of Emperor Maximilian I of Austria and until 1918 sang exclusively for the court at mass, private concerts, functions and state occasions. Many famous musicians worked with the choir including, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Antonio Salieri. Some famous composers were choristers themselves such as composers, Franz Schubert, Hans Richter and Clemens Kraus.
Today there are about one hundred choristers between the ages of ten and fourteen, divided into four touring choirs who in total give approximately three hundred concerts and performances each year in front of nearly half a million people. Their repertoire includes everything from medieval to contemporary and experimental music. They perform many of their own arrangements of waltzes and polkas by Strauss and they have a long tradition of commissioning new works. Since the 1920’s the choir has collected music on its travels. One of the educational goals is to introduce the boys to as many different styles of music as possible. This goal has produced some of their most recent programs including Silk Road, which featured songs from Uzbekistan and China, a qawwali and ghazal, as well as field hollers, all sung in the original languages.
The program for the Young Auditorium features a mix of their standard repertoire and holiday selections. Don’t miss and evening with the incomparable Vienna Choir Boys. For tickets call 262-472-5705 or purchase tickets on-line at www.uww.edu/youngauditoium
- Leslie LaMuro,lamurol@uww.edu
