All Concerts 8 PM

Each concert is preceeded by a lecture at 7 PM
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2010-2011 Concert Series

October 28, 2010

Requiem & Remembrance

Heinrich Schütz - Musikalische Exequien (German Requiem)
J.S. Bach - Jesu meine Freude, other German Baroque masterpieces.

Choir of St. Luke in the Fields with period instruments.

December 2, 2010

A Roman Christmas

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Missa Hodie Christus natus est
& motets for the Christmas Season

Choir of St. Luke in the Fields

January 27, 2011

A Fantasy Through Time

Five Centuries of Organ Fantasies
J.S. Bach, J.P. Sweelinck, W.A. Mozart & Jehan Alain

David Shuler, organist

March 3, 2011

Tomás Luis de Victoria
A 400th anniversary celebration

A celebration of the splendor of the Spanish Renaissance on the 400th anniversary of the death of Spain's most important composer.
Missa Gaudeamus & Motets

Choir of St. Luke in the Fields

April 14, 2011

C.P.E. Bach
St. Matthew Passion

First New York performance of a newly rediscovered masterpiece

Choir of St. Luke in the Fields with soloists and orchestra of period instruments.

2009-2010 Concert Season

October 29, 2009

Father and Son:
The Music of Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti

Including Domenico’s famous ‘Stabat Mater’ – Choir of St. Luke in the Fields with period instruments

December 3, 2009

Christmas in the British Isles

January 21, 2010

J.S. Bach at Weimar

Early Virtuosic Masterpieces

David Shuler , organist

March 11, 2010 In the Shadow of the Cross

Holy Week music by Renaissance master

Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594)

Choir of St. Luke in the Fields

November 13, 2008

When Schütz met Gabrieli
A three year encounter that changed Western music

The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields
with an ensemble of
cornets, sacbuts and organ

In 1609, the young Heinrich Schütz traveled to Venice to study the art of composition with Giovanni Gabrieli, the ‘grand old man' of Venetian sacred music.  What Schütz discovered was the sonorous and opulent music for voices and instruments in multiple choirs.  He returned to Dresden in 1612, shortly after Gabrieli's death.  Schütz published the monumental Psalmen Davids in 1619, a collection of Psalm settings in the cori spezzati idiom perfected by Gabrieli, a clear tribute to his teacher.  The program will include selections from this collection as well as other works showing the influence of his teacher, along with compositions by Gabrieli from the Symphoniae sacrae of 1597 and 1615 - music that Schütz likely heard during his Venetian sojourn.

February 5, 2009

Johannes Ockeghem -
Prince of Music

Masses and motets by the Renaissance master

The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields

The Franco-Flemish composer Johannes Ockeghem (d.1497) was the greatest musician of the late 15th century.  Both the modern historian and the composer's contemporaries concur on this judgment, for no one enjoyed greater prestige among musicians of the Renaissance.  To great humanist Erasmus, Ockeghem was "Prince of Music."  He was revered above all for his extraordinary contrapuntal skills.  The program will include two of his most brilliant and finely crafted works: the Missa prolationem, which may well be the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the 15^th century, and the Missa cuiusvis toni, designed to be sung in "any mode."  In our performance, each movement will be sung in a different mode.

March 5, 2009

The Sorrowful Mysteries
Music of
Heinrich Franz Ignaz Biber
& Orlande de Lassus

Rosary Sonatas featuring
violinist Leah Gale Nelson;

motets by Orlande de Lassus
performed by the Choir of St. Luke in the Fields

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704), the preeminent violin virtuoso of the 17th century and Kapellmeister at Salzburg Cathedral left a body of extraordinary works for the violin, including his Mystery Sonatas (also called the Rosary Sonatas. These sonatas enjoy pride of place in solo instrumental repertoire, not only for their virtuosic and often pyrotechnic composition but each sonata also requires a re-tuning of the instrument, called scordatura, providing each with its own distinctive character and sonority. In this concert, St. Luke's resident baroque violinist Leah Gale Nelson completes her traversal of these sonatas, presenting the set corresponding with the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.  The program will also include motets for the Lenten season by Orlande de Lassus.

March 26, 2009

Organ Recital: The German Romantics:  

Organ works by Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn

David Shuler, organist

Two of the major expressions of Romanticism in German organ music can be found in the compositions for the organ by Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms.  The program will explore various forms and genres of both composers important contribution to the19th-century repertoire for the organ, music particularly suited to St. Luke's 1986 Casavant Frères organ.

Johann Sebastian Bach:
The Six Motets
The Choir of St. Luke in the Fields with period instruments

The six motets are some of the greatest - and most virtuosic - of all Bach's choral works, and they represent Bach at his exuberant best. In particular, the large double choir works Singet dem Herrn and Der Geist Hilf, and the four-part Lobet den Herrn give the impression of being festive works written for major celebrations.  The motets also contain some of Bach's most profound and intense music.  As with virtually every other genre that he composed in, Bach brought motet composition to its pinnacle.