National

Spring For Music: A Rare American Oratorio At Carnegie Hall

Published May 9, 2014 at 10:40 AM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

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The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus came to Carnegie Hall on May 9, 2014, as one of the last orchestras to participate in the Spring for Music festival.

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Their performance began with John Adams' 'Harmonium,' a three-movement setting of poems by John Donne and Emily Dickinson written in 1981 for chorus and orchestra.

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Visitors from Cincinnati waved green scarves to salute their hometown heroes — a tradition at the Spring for Music festival, which just ended as a project after a four-year run that brought less-heralded orchestras from around North America to Carnegie Hall.

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Members of the orchestra and Conlon also sported green accessories.

Conductor James Conlon often champions rarely heard music, and wanted to resuscitate R. Nathaniel Dett's 1937 oratorio <em>The Ordering of Moses </em>-- a piece whose broadcast premiere was interrupted.

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Conductor James Conlon often champions rarely heard music, and wanted to resuscitate R. Nathaniel Dett's 1937 oratorio The Ordering of Moses -- a piece whose broadcast premiere was interrupted.

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The soloists, orchestra and chorus acknowledge the audience's warm applause for the Dett oratorio — which was a New York premiere, 77 years after the piece was written.

Hear an intriguing program pairing John Adams' gorgeous Harmonium with an oratorio by black Canadian-American composer R. Nathaniel Dett — a work whose 1937 premiere was weirdly cut short.

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Program

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ADAMS Harmonium

DETT The Ordering of Moses

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

May Festival Chorus

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James Conlon, music director

Latonia Moore, soprano

Ronnita Nicole Miller, mezzo-soprano

Rodrick Dixon, tenor

Donnie Ray Albert, baritone