Los Angeles Master Chorale Presents Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem and West Coast Premiere of Peter Lieberson’s The World In Flower January 26, 2013

The Los Angeles Master Chorale captures the shared human experience with a pairing of Brahms’ sublime Ein Deutsches Requiem and the West Coast premiere of The World in Flower, Peter Lieberson’s lyrical and moving message of tolerance written in memory of his wife and muse, famed mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, with whom the Chorale performed Adam’s El Niño in Los Angeles and New York. This compelling and heartfelt program, conducted by Music Director Grant Gershon, is presented in a special matinee performance on Saturday, January 26, 2013, 2 pm, repeating on Sunday, January 27, 2013, 7 pm. Gershon and KUSC’s Alan Chapman participate in ListenUp!, the pre-concert talk two hours prior to each performance. The soloists for the Lieberson piece are Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano, and Brian Mulligan, baritone. Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem features soloists Yulia Van Doren, soprano, and Mulligan.

“Both works are truly universal, embracing and reflecting humanity in profound ways,” notes Gershon.

Brahms’ magnum opus, Ein Deutsches Requiem, has been called “a requiem for the living,” giving hope to those in mourning and compassion and comfort for all of mankind. The Chorale’s last presentation of the transcendent work was in 2006, which the Los Angeles Times proclaimed, “a finely realized performance… that filled the sold-out hall with cathedral sounds and crescendos that could be felt as well as heard.”

Lieberson’s The World in Flower, praised by the New York Times as “serene, sincere (and) radiant” was written for his ailing wife who ultimately succumbed to breast cancer. It is set to the text of 11 different sources, each with a unique frame of reference, among them a traditional Navajo poem, a poem from an Inuit Shaman, the Bible, and works by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and American poet Walt Whitman. Lieberson, a Buddhist who completed the piece in the hospital while fighting lymphoma (he later succumbed to his cancer in 2011), draws from the similarities between these disparate texts, highlighting the common human experience and embracing the world as a sacred place. The cantata, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, is written for mezzo-soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra.

Tickets range from $29 - $134. Group rates are available. For tickets and information, please call (213) 972-7282, or visit www.lamc.org. (Tickets cannot be purchased at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Box Office except on concert days starting 2 hours prior to the performance.) The Walt Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue at First Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Official Website: http://www.lamc.org