Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

What a spectacular way to close out @mayfestivalcincy’s 2024 season in style! Pairing one of the best-known requiems in today’s choral repertoire with one of the most inventive and exhilarating new works by this year’s festival director Julia Wolfe (@juliawolfemusic) proves that music can truly inspire new generations of audiences.
Her Story, composed in 2022, pays tribute to, as the composer herself describes it, “the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights and representation for women in America”. With stage direction by Anne Kaufman and production design by members of Bang on a Can, it was one of the most ferociously engrossing, awe-inspiring contemporary works encountered in the past 20 years of coming to performances at Music Hall. The ten singers of the Lorelei Ensemble (@loreleiensemble) and @cincysymphony told a spellbinding story of how women have been silenced, mistreated and otherwise ignored in centuries past, yet have preserved and overcome these barriers up to the present day. The finest moment of the entire work was Wolfe’s use of a MASSIVE battery of percussion creating huge walls of sound throughout as an integral component of this tale. Guest conductor Francois Lopez-Ferrer (a former associate conductor of the CSO) led the combined forces with huge sweep, weighty, dramatic heft and spine-tingling ferocity.
Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem (composed between 1887-1890) ranks as one of the most frequently-performed and well-known choral works in the repertoire. The May Festival Chorus and CSO gave an invigorating yet subdued reading of this score with beautiful, if all-too-brief, solo contributions from soprano Liv Redpath (@liv.redpath), baritone Elliott Madore (@elliotmadore) and guest organist Todd Wilson.
As this was Robert Porco’s final season as chorus director, he was given the honor of conducting the traditional audience sing-along of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, being rewarded with a lengthy and hearty ovation.
The May Festival has been a resounding success in its first year under a new leadership model, and I eagerly anticipate more successes from this organization in the years to come.