Illinois music ensemble, professors part of Vienna's music scene this spring | Illinois – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Chamber Singers is performing in Europe this spring during a 12-day exchange trip with the University of Vienna choir.
Photo by Eddie Scott Photo
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Chamber Singers at the University of Illinois performed two concerts on campus last year with members of the University of Vienna choir, and students from the two choirs spent time together and developed friendships. Now the Chamber Singers are traveling to Vienna to sing with the choir there, as well as perform elsewhere during a 12-day European trip that began May 24.
“There’s nothing like singing together to bring communities together,” said music professor Andrew Megill, the conductor of the Chamber Singers, the premier choral ensemble at the U. of I.
The exchange with the Vienna choir is the first international trip for a U. of I. choir since Megill became the director of choral activities for the School of Music three years ago. Megill said choral ensembles frequently traveled internationally in the 1970s and 1980s, and he’s hoping the trip to Vienna represents the renewal of that tradition.
“Especially for music students, so much of what we study had its birth in strange-sounding places in faraway countries. To see those places and buildings, rather than seeing their pictures in books, it makes (the music) come alive and reminds us that it was written by human beings,” Megill said.
The 26 undergraduate and graduate students in the Chamber Singers ensemble will perform on most of the days of their trip, including two full concerts in Vienna with the university choir there and concerts of varying lengths in other cities. The ensemble will sing in Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt, Austria, where composer Joseph Haydn spent most of his career.
“Esterhazy is so important in terms of music history, and it’s also in a charming small city,” Megill said.
They’ll also perform a joint concert with a choir in Budapest, Hungary, and they’ll sing at a music festival in Freistadt, Austria. The students will visit typical sightseeing destinations such as museums and concert halls, and those who have studied German will test their language skills. Megill said the U. of I. has close ties with Vienna, as a large number of study-abroad students spend time there and some alumni live there.
Those connections include two U. of I. faculty members – music professor William Kinderman and theatre professor Katherine Syer – currently on sabbatical in Vienna and involved with many European institutions.
Music professor and Beethoven expert William Kinderman is helping to create a Beethoven museum in Vienna, to open in November.
Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
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“No city is more important for classical music than Vienna,” said Kinderman, a professor of music and a leading expert on Beethoven.
Working with Matti Bunzl, the director of the Wien Museum in Vienna and a former U. of I. professor, Kinderman is helping to create a Beethoven museum in Vienna to open this November. The new museum – the Beethoven Museum Heiligenstadt, located in an area of Vienna called Heiligenstadt where the composer spent much time and overcame his crisis over his incurable deafness through a pivotal creative breakthrough – includes exhibition space, a research center and a performance venue.
“The museum will be innovative and provide fresh interpretation of Beethoven’s achievements,” Kinderman said. “It’s a blend of modern museum presentation with a traditional emphasis on historical authenticity. It will explore aspects of Beethoven’s creative process, with recordings of musical sketches and drafts, so visitors can gain enhanced access to the world of Beethoven’s musical imagination, as well as his cultural and political importance.”
In addition to working on the museum, Kinderman organized an international Beethoven conference in March in Vienna on Beethoven’s “Empire of the Mind,” as the composer described his artistic work. The conference featured a conversation with conductor John Eliot Gardiner. As a pianist, Kinderman has performed this year in many European cities, including a recital in Vienna.
Syer, a theatre studies professor whose focus is opera, said Vienna is “a pulse point for music studies” and an ideal place for their work.
Theatre professor Katherine Syer, pictured at La Scala opera house in Milan before delivering a keynote lecture at a Wagner conference, is working with opera directors, designers and singers in Europe while researching 21st century opera production.
Photo provided by Katherine Syer
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“Vienna is one of the top opera-producing cities in the world. There are more than 700 performances per year,” said Syer, who is working with directors, designers and singers in Vienna and elsewhere in Europe. She is researching a book on 21st century opera production, looking at stage direction and design, as well as the enhanced focus on choreography.
“The opera scene is vibrant and alive and really emphasizes theatrical dimensions of the genre. It is somewhat different than conventional North American practices, although cross-Atlantic influences are growing,” Syer said.
She has worked with Bunzl, as well, on events related to the 2015 Chicago production of the 1968 opera “The Passenger,” about a guard and prisoners in a World War II concentration camp. She was invited to speak this spring about American stagings of the opera at a conference in Moscow, where “The Passenger” finally premiered almost 50 years after its original performance at the Bolshoi Theatre was canceled.
Editor’s note: To reach Andrew Megill, email amegill@illinois.edu. To reach William Kinderman, email wkinder@illinois.edu. To reach Katherine Syer, email ksyer@illinois.edu.
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