Join us on Easter Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 (and again on Monday, April 21 at 7 p.m. on HD-2) as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you a complete concert performance of Handel’s Messiah from The Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2023/2024 season, with the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir and a quartet of stellar soloists: soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Spencer Britten, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn. Music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is on the podium.
The performance includes all three sections of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. After a dignified Overture, the first part encompasses prophecies of the coming of the Messiah, and the birth and ministry of Jesus Christ. The second deals with his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, concluding with the jubilant “Hallelujah!” chorus. Part III looks forward to the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Stay tuned after the broadcast for a special Easter edition of Sunday Classical on WRTI from 3 to 6 p.m. with host Melinda Whiting. Then a complete performance of Bach’s Easter Oratorio by Collegium Vocale Gent, conducted by Philippe Herreweghe, along with other music composed for Easter by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, William Byrd and Ralph Vaughan Williams beginning at 6 p.m. on WRTI HD-2.
So Messiah encompasses several of the major festivals of the Christian liturgical year, from Christmas to Ascension, but Handel himself associated the work with Holy Week and Easter. His librettist, an Anglican clergyman named Charles Jennens, assembled Messiah’s text from excerpts of the King James Version of the Bible, interspersed with selections from the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, the edition that Handel’s British audiences would have used as their principal Anglican service book. Incredibly, Handel composed this massive work in less than four weeks, in August and September of 1741.
In an interview heard during the broadcast, Yannick comments on the enduring appeal of this iconic oratorio: “The proportions of Messiah, the story that's familiar to Christians all over the world, the way it is told, the balance between the poetry of it and still the storytelling, the contrast between the very pastoral moments and the moments where you feel the passion of Christ with the mob scenes, and the contemplation, the feeling of prayer, very personal. I think it's all a collection of this that just strikes the exact right amount of everything to touch anybody's heart.”
PROGRAM:
Handel: Messiah
The Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Symphonic Choir
Yannick Nezet-Seguin, conductor
Lucy Crowe, soprano
Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano
Spencer Britten, tenor
Christian Van Horn, bass-baritone
WRTI PRODUCTION TEAM:
Melinda Whiting: Host
Alex Ariff: Senior Producer
Tyler McClure: Broadcast Engineer
Listen to The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert broadcasts every Sunday at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1, streaming at WRTI.org, on the WRTI mobile app, and on your smart speaker.
