Mark Vuorinen, conductor
Rachel Fenlon, soprano
The Elora Singers
Musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony
Step into a world of drama, poetry, and radiant choral sound in this captivating program featuring soprano Rachel Fenlon. The evening begins with the sparkling imagination of Felix Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a work composed when the prodigious composer was just seventeen, brimming with fairy magic and orchestral brilliance.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s dramatic concert aria Ah! perfido follows, a virtuosic showcase for soprano that moves from fiery indignation to lyrical tenderness. The mood then shifts to luminous reflection with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, a beloved tribute to the power of music itself, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
The program culminates in Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, a work of profound humanity and expressive warmth. Both intimate and expansive, it reveals Beethoven’s deeply personal voice, bringing soloists, choir, and orchestra together in a moving celebration of faith, hope, and the transcendent beauty of music.