// UPCOMING & PAST PERFORMANCES
Recent Performances
December 28, 2011
Our Christmas performance, Welcome, Yulës Day, took place on Tuesday evening,December 20, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. at Macalester Plymouth Church. This celebration of Winter, Advent and Christmas featured seasonal music from medieval England, 19th Century Russia, Germany and early America. We also got your help in singing holiday favorites from all over. That’s right, there was audience participation!
If you bought a ticket for this concert, we hope you held onto the stub. If you bring that to another concert this season, you can exchange it for a 15% discount on the ticket price for that concert! You have to turn it in, so it’s only good for one deal.
Our next performance, 1/19/12
November 29, 2011
Zimnaia Soloveika (Winter’s Nightingale)
On 1/19/12, Silver Swan will present a program examining the music and life of Aleksandra Feodorovna Romanova, the wife of Nicholas II and the last Empress of Russia.
As a young German countess, Alix of Hesse played, sang and collected music from all over Europe. This granddaughter of Queen Victoria became an accomplished amateur musician, and the music she collected ended up in the Imperial Library of the Romanov family.
Composers of the music we perform
October 6, 2011
Here’s some information about the composers we feature, listed by program:
Welcome, Yulës Day
Hugo Wolf (also written about in Serenata) composed his Spanisches Liederbuch to poems translated from Spanish into German by Emanuel Geibel and Paul Heyse. The original poets were variously very famous (like Cervantes or Lope de Vega) or anonymous, and the book is divided into two sections: Sacred or Worldly poems. The two songs on this program, Nun wandre Maria and Führ mich, Kind, nach Bethlehem, hail from the sacred portion.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was considered one of the fathers of modern film music. In his youth in Vienna, he was considered a star of serious music, writing opera, orchestral and chamber music. His Schneeglöckchen (Snowdrops) comes from his op. 9, Einfache Lieder (‘Simple Songs’). Korngold emigrated to America in 1938, shortly before the Nazi Anschluss; he died in Hollywood in 1957.
Serenata
October 6, 2011
Check back at this spot for news on the rescheduling of this concert (originally planned for October 14, 2011)!
Serenata
An evening of tales
2011/2012 Season
June 3, 2011
We hope you will join us for our 2011-2012 season! This year, we will present 4 concerts in the Twin Cities area.
Our season opens with an encore presentation of Serenata, an evening of music depicting the perils and triumphs of love through the songs of the troubadour beneath the window. The centerpiece of the program is a selection of German songs from Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. It also features part-songs by Luca Marenzio, Orlando di Lasso, Pomponio Nenna and others!
Le Chant des Oyseaux
March 10, 2011
chansons & mélodies from the 14th to the 20th centuries
Music for an Early Spring by Janéquin, Le Jeune, Certon, Debussy, Fauré, Gounod, and others;
with guests Charles Kemper & Kristine Kautzmann
