Toledo Choral Society to perform Mozart

4/28/2011

Mozart's rarely performed choral work, Missa Solemnis in C, K337, is to receive its Toledo premiere by the Toledo Choral Society in a 7 p.m. concert Wednesday in Epiphany Lutheran Church, 915 Reynolds Rd.

Now in its 92nd season, the choral society will be joined by soloists Jennifer Cresswell, soprano; Ellen Scholl, mezzo-soprano; Christopher Scholl, tenor, and Bradley Cresswell, baritone.

Standing in for his ailing father, the longtime Toledo Choral Society director Samuel P. Szor, Thomas Szor will conduct the choir and a chamber orchestra from the Toledo Symphony.

Following the 22-minute mass, the program will continue with choral music by Schubert, Caccini, and Mozart. Also performing will be the piano duo of Szor and Zsuzsanna Balla, offering music by Erkel, Weiner, and Liszt. Tickets are $10 at the door.

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The North Coast Concert Band and Big Band will present a spring concert at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Ernsthausen Performing Arts Center of Norwalk Senior High School, 360 Shady Lane, Norwalk. The Arts Center is handicapped accessible, and there is parking at the door. The concert is free.

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The Toledo Symphony will make its Carnegie Hall debut at 7:30 p.m. May 7 in the world-famous New York City hall. Principal conductor Stefan Sanderling will lead the symphony in Symphony No. 6 by Shostakovich and, with the Glacity Theatre Collective, a production of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, by Thomas Stoppard and Andre Previn.

The concert is part of the inaugural Spring For Music festival of performances by seven North American orchestras, presented by the Festival of North American Orchestras under a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Tickets are still available through the Carnegie box office.

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The Toledo Piano Teachers will present its monthly program at 10:30 a.m. May 10 in the Manor House of Wildwood Preserve Metropark. Performers will be pianists Barbara Harris and Barbara Foote, plus oboist Bonnie Rowe.

A luncheon will follow the performance. Tickets are $7 at the door.

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Bowling Green State University has announced the winners of its 12th annual Marjorie Conrad Art Song Competition, held earlier this month in Kobacker Hall of the Moore Musical Arts Center. Six singers with their accompanists shared $6,500 in prize money in graduate and undergraduate divisions.

Of the three graduate student winners, first place went to mezzo Christine Amon and pianist Heidi Clausius; second went to soprano Theresa Zapata and pianist TatianaGorbunova, and third prize was awarded to soprano Amanda DeBoer with pianist Karl Larson.

Undergraduate winners were, in first place, mezzo Melissa Penkava and pianist Jacintha Ratnasamy; second place to soprano Rachel Taylor and pianist Melinda Sondag, and third prize to Cassandra Utt and pianist Sara Tobe.

The goal of the contest is to encourage the study of art songs. Public broadcasting station WBGU-BGSU recorded the competition and is to screen it next fall.

Items for News of Music should be sent to svallongo@theblade.com at least two weeks ahead of performance date.