Per our decade long tradition, the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra will celebrate the holiday concert season with the performance of Handel’s masterpiece Messiah. The first half of the concert features the GLCO choir and soloists in Oratorio de Noel by Camille Saint-Saëns, setting the mood for the Christmas story. Saint-Saëns’ Oratorio is an intimate work blending a number of musical styles—narrative recitatives, folk-like melodies, passionate operatic solo passages, and simple choral writing. It was composed in 1858, when the Church of the Madeleine in Paris commissioned Camille Saint-Saëns to write work for that year’s Christmas celebration. The concert concludes with the first and second sections of Handel’s famous oratorio Messiah, ending with the celebratory and beloved Hallelujah chorus.
Click below to hear the Hallelujah chorus section from 2019’s Messiah: