In the News!

The Boston Musical Intelligencer | January 25, 2012
Common Tones: Two Takes on Eternity
By Ben Houge
The program for the Cantata Singers’ “Astonished Breath” performance on January 21 at First Church in Cambridge welcomed listeners with a near apology for straying from the music of Bach in recent concerts. They needn’t have worried. The sanctuary was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic audience who had braved the first serious snowfall of the season to experience the Concerto for Choir of iconoclastic Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (who died in 1998) and the Berliner Messe by Estonian Arvo Pärt (still quite active).
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The Arts Fuse | January 25, 2010
Cantata Singers Warble an “Astonished Breath”
By Anthony J. Palmer
Two extraordinary choral works, one masterful conductor, and a chorus of dedicated and talented singers were the ingredients for a remarkable recipe of successful music making. At first glance, The Concerto for Choir by Alfred Schnittke, Russian composer, now deceased (1998), and the Berliner Messe by Arvo Pärt, Estonian, now dividing his time between Tallin and Berlin, was a highly questionable pairing. But art is not always logical or reasonable. The concert, titled The Astonished Breath, combined both works into a strange, but rewarding, contrast.
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MissMusicNerd.com | January 24, 2012
Lost Chords, Found: Cantata Singers Perform Schnittke and Pärt
By Miss Music Nerd
Cantata Singers always impresses with their technical musical excellence, but what clinches it for me is their obvious affection for and commitment to everything they sing, especially when they choose works slightly off the beaten path, as they did here.
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The Boston Globe | January 23, 2012
Cantata Singers astonish in breathtaking pairing
By Jeffrey Gantz
The Cantata Singers’ pairing of obscure works by Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt Saturday at First Church, Congregational, was the kind of masterstroke that looks obvious - after someone else has thought of it. . . . Led by Cantata Singers music director David Hoose, the program was called “The Astonished Breath,’’ and it was certainly astonishing.
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The Boston Phoenix | January, 2012
Some good musical news in troubled musical times
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The Boston Globe | January 20, 2012
David Hoose leads Cantata Singers in ‘The Astonished Breath’
By David Weininger
“I looked at this thing and I thought, Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous.’’ That was David Hoose’s immediate reaction, several years ago, to the Concerto for Mixed Chorus by Alfred Schnittke, a famously heterodox 20th-century Russian composer. The piece was urged on him by a longtime member of the Cantata Singers, the chorus that Hoose is in his 29th year of directing.
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The Boston Globe | November 11, 2011
Cantata ensemble compares eras with ‘Extended Arch’
By Matthew Guerrieri
Friday’s season-opening concert by the Cantata Singers and conductor David Hoose, “The Extended Arch,’’ matched works by J. S. Bach and contemporary composer Stephen Hartke, a discussion across eras. But the contrast brought to the fore a kind of historical diverging of content and technique, with the newer music tending to value craft as an end in itself.

Hartke’s “Precepts,’’ given its full premiere (the group introduced two of the three movements in 2007), sets biblical passages of political point, admonitions against greed, reminders of duty to the poor and outcast - Occupy Scripture, so to speak. The new first movement had oboe soloist Peggy Pearson, strings, organ, and women’s voices in scurrying susurration, using Matthew 16:26 (“What does it profit a man,’’ etc.) to generate an image for modern activists: a twittering storm.
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ArtsFuse | November 11, 2011
Fuse Classical Music Review: Boston’s Cantata Singers
By Melanie O'Neill
Boston’s Cantata Singers opened their 48th season on November 4th with an interesting mix of sacred and secular music, with two pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and two by Stephen Hartke. True to the Cantata Singers’ reputation for versatility and musical exploration, the program featured Bach classics as well as the world premiere of Hartke’s vocal work,Precepts.

The program began with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F. The ensemble brought a bright sound to the festive Allegro, along with a strong rhythmic drive. Without too much exaggerated staccato, the tempo was crisp and lively. The three oboes contributed color and warmth to the movement, countering the alternately stoic and dynamic strings. The fleeting feeling of the Adagio movement provides a sharp contrast. The wavering lines, played alternately by the woodwinds and strings, make use of such devices as neighbor tones and trills, coupled with the broken chords played by the harpsichord. The music leaves the listener with the sensation of wading through water.
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The Berkshire Review | June 20, 2011
Looking Back at the Boston Winter and Spring Music Season, 2010-11
By Charles Warren
Soon after the BSO presented its Bartók and Stravinsky short operas, the Cantata Singers under Music Director David Hoose continued their “Ralph Vaughan Williams Season” with that composer’s one-act Riders to the Sea, from 1936, almost contemporary with Oedipus Rex, based on the J.M. Synge short play about Aran Islanders and the loss of fishermen at sea. Vaughan Williams restrains his own atmospheric-evocative powers here and fashions a work focused on Synge’s beautiful and suggestive words, letting the words come to the fore. The semi-staged performance was fine—soloists, chorus, and orchestra, with mezzo Lynn Torgrove especially effective as Maurya, the mother who loses a son.
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