Festival Orchestra 4

The final concert will open with Ad Matrem, Henryk Gorecki’s sacred work for soprano, mixed chorus, and orchestra. Based on the text of the 13^th century hymn, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, this piece is almost a symphonic poem. Lux Aeterna, by Morten Lauridsen, is a choral work fashioned on texts from several different Latin sources, including the Requiem mass, with each movement containing a reference to light and all it connotes. The concert and festival will come to a fitting end with Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s evocation of the Slavic folk spirit, with its violent sacrificial dance and extraordinary elemental power.

2025 Featured Composer: Igor Stravinsky

For 2025, Susan Waterfall’s composer series will feature the innovative and influential Igor Stravinsky. Immerse yourself in his world and his music, and understand how his music evolved over his lifetime with narrated chamber recitals featuring exciting guest artists, and various other settings of Stravinsky’s work across the Festival.

Explore the Series

Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” -Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet