CANTERBURY 2013-2014 Concert Season

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Carmina Burana

  Friday, October 4, 2013 at 8 PM

75 years ago, the world first heard one of the most popular choral works ever written. It has become so iconic that its opening, “O Fortuna,” has been used in commercials, at sporting events.  Pretty unlikely popularity for 800-year-old poetry!  German composer Carl Orff (1895-1982) premiered the piece at the Frankfurt Opera.  Orff knew he had struck musical gold. Already 41 years old at the time, he declared to his publisher of more than a decade, “Everything I have written to date…can be destroyed, with Carmina burana my collected works begin.”

Canterbury Christmas   

Sunday, December 8, 2013 at 7 PM

Canterbury’s annual Christmas concert has become a much-loved and highly anticipated holiday tradition in the Oklahoma City community!  Joining us each year are always a variety of guests and the children of Canterbury Youth Choruses.  Also featured will be the traditional holiday carol sing-a-long with the audience which always reveals some possible future singers with Canterbury!  Brass, bells and organ complete the festive sounds of the evening.  This experience is a joyous event of holiday cheer to share with friends and family!  Begin your holidays by giving the gift of music!

For your Christmas stocking, Canterbury’s Christmas CD will be sold again this year!

This concert will be followed by a Holiday Reception in the Civic Center lobby.

Brahms Requiem

Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 8 PM

Brahms may have written the Requiem in memory of his mother, but it is equally possible that he had in mind his great friend and composer, Robert Schumann, whose madness and tragic death had profoundly affected the young Brahms.

Brahms wrote a Requiem to comfort the living, not one for the souls of the dead. Consequently the work focuses on faith in the Resurrection rather than fear of the Day of Judgement.  It was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of exceptional vision, and it finally confirmed Brahms’ reputation as a composer of international stature.

The famous chorus, ‘How lovely are thy dwellings’, is at the heart of the work, and moves from solemnity and grief to the certainty of comfort.  Just as in Handel’s Messiah, it features a baritone soloist singing ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed …… at the sound of the last trumpet’, as well as the lyrics ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ The Requiem reaches its peaceful conclusion at the same word with which it began: ‘Blessed’.