Christmas in central Ohio never sounded so French.
The professional choir ProArteOHIO and organist Joshua Brodbeck will perform NOËL: Motets, Holiday Favorites and French Carols, conducted by ProArteOHIO Artistic Director Stephen Caracciolo on Sunday, Nov. 30 at 4 p.m. in Lancaster’s Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption and on Sunday, Dec. 14 at 4 p.m. in St. Mary Catholic Church, German Village. The Lancaster-Fairfield Youth Choir joins ProArteOHIO on the Lancaster performance.
NOËL continues the tradition of ProArteOHIO’s annual holiday concert focusing on repertoires from various countries. This year, for the first time, the concert will have a French accent.
“In the past, we have done some concerts at Christmastime in Spanish, in German, but we have not concentrated on the music of France. So I thought we’d go that direction this year,” Caracciolo said.
The program’s largely French repertoire offers a unique sound world with a range of deliciously French sonorities. NOËL will showcase the effervescent filigree of French classical style alongside the jazz-hued harmonies of more recent works.
“We’re capitalizing on that impressionistic, cloudy sound, that beautiful harmonic color that is so French, and what we think of as that French jazzy, smoky sound. But we’re also doing the (Claude-Louis) Daquin Noel that many people play on the organ, and that’s the French classical, highly ornamented sound,” Caracciolo said, “those two really completely different traditions within French music.”
Hymne à la Vierge (Hymn to the Virgin) by 20th-century composer Pierre Villette is a warm and wondrous piece in the tradition of works by French late Romantic and Impressionist composers Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé and Claude Debussy. In contemporary British choral conductor and arranger Stephen Jackson’s Noël Nouvelet (Sing We Now of Christmas), adventurous harmonies give the medieval French carol a distinctly modern voice.
The Columbus-based international concert organist Joshua Brodbeck will perform Daquin’s Noel We Sing, which garlands classical form and style with dazzling virtuosity.
“Daquin wrote 10 or 12 of these amazing variations on Christmas carols. Each variation gets more and more ornamented and more flashy. By the time you get to the end you’re going, who is up there on the (organ) bench?”
Other highlights include an audience sing-along to the beloved carol “Angels We Have Heard on High” and two of Caracciolo’s own choral arrangements, Bring a Torch Jeannette, Isabella, arranged for high voices, and People, Look East, for full a cappella chorus.
ProArteOHIO performs NOËL: Motets, Holiday Favorites and French Carols with organist Joshua Brodbeck on Sunday, Nov. 30 at 4 p.m. in Lancaster’s Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption and on Sunday, Dec. 14 at 4 p.m. in St. Mary Catholic Church, German Village.
