Annonciation
Live from The Singing Life: National Youth Choral Festival
Recorded March 29th, 2010 at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, CA.
Performed by Chanticleer, the Chanticleer Youth Orchestra, Frederica Von Stade and the National Youth Choral Festival choirs:
Bishop Amat Memorial High School, La Puente, CA
C.D. Hylton High School, Woodbridge, VA
Members of Gioventu Musicale, of the Hawai’i Youth Opera Chorus, Honolulu, HI
Lowell High School, San Francisco, CA
Pacific Youth Choir, Portland, OR
Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, CA
Paso Robles High School, Paso Robles, CA
Piedmont High School, Piedmont, CA
San Francisco School of the Arts High School, San Francisco, CA
Sandy Creek High School, Tyrone, GA
Santa Rosa High School, Santa Rosa, CA
Templeton High School, Templeton, CA
Daniel-Lesur, French composer and teacher, was born in Paris in 1908. His mother was a composer and a student of Tournemire, from whom Daniel- Lesur took early organ and composition lessons. He studied further at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1936, Daniel-Lesur was – along with Messiaen, Livet, and Baudrier – a founding member of the group La Jeune France, dedicated to a “return to the human” and opposed to the neo-classicism then prevailing in Paris. His collected works include some fifty mélodies, three operas, four cantatas, a mass, and over thirty folksong arrangements, all speaking of his love of the human voice. He also composed numerous works for orchestras, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments.
Poet Loys Masson was born in 1915 in the largely French-speaking British territory of Mauritius (now an independent nation.) He rose to prominence as a poet early in life and, with the generous support of friends, raised the money to move to France. Arriving in Paris on the day of the outbreak of World War II, he struggled to survive for a few years before meeting other notable French poets such as Louis Aragon, Pierre Seghers, and Claude Roy. It was during this time that he became acquainted with Daniel- Lesur. He wrote a number of religious-themed poetic works, including Annonciation, before his premature death in 1969.
Annonciation was originally commissioned by Radio France for live broadcast on Christmas Eve of 1951, when it was aired furing Le Mystere de Noël as one of five cantatas by five different composers. This recording was made at the American premiere on March 29, 2010 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, performed by a choir consisting of Chanticleer and 416 High School singers , a youth orchestra conducted by Matthew Oltman, and Frederica Von Stade as the narrator.