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Good Friday Cantata—7 PMOur Chancel Choir, led by Dr. Wyant Morton, will sing Franz Liszt’s Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross).
Liszt is often described as the ‘first virtuoso’ – a superstar pianist and composer who invented the piano recital and whose fame and following in the nineteenth century were unprecedented. Much of Liszt’s reputation hangs on sweeping virtuosic showpieces so technically challenging that only Liszt could play them. But at age 50 he took a step back, taking Holy Orders and embarking upon a new life of religious devotion and creative introspection.
One of the major statements of Liszt’s late period was Via Crucis, a journey through the Stations of the Cross for choir and piano, written in the last year of his life but was never performed in the composer’s lifetime. It wasn’t until 1929 that the work was given its first airing, on Good Friday, in the capital of the composer’s native Hungary, Budapest.
Via Crucis is unlike any other work in the repertoire: a concentrated ritual drama, ranging from liturgical chant to Lisztian chromaticism at its most searching and expressive. It sets a pianist and choir in dialogue with one another, each performing alone as well as together.
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Event Venue
1600 E Hillcrest Dr, Thousand Oaks, CA, United States, California 91362
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