Ambitious Concerts Highlight a Big Weekend for Classical Music Fans 

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• Courtesy
• Green Mountain Mahler Festival

Two chorus and orchestra concerts in the Burlington area this weekend promise to go big, for different reasons. The Green Mountain Mahler Festival performs a concert version of the first act of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) on Saturday night with three professional soloists — one of whom has sung at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

On Sunday afternoon, Québec-based baroque vocal ensemble L'Harmonie des saisons will be joined by members of Burlington's College Street Congregational Church choir. They'll bring to life Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in its original form on 19th-century instruments — for the first time in North America, according to musical codirector and cofounder Eric Milnes.

The Mahler Fest, a community rehearsal orchestra, was founded in 2002 by double bassist Daniel Weiss to give local players of all abilities the chance to learn large-scale romantic-era symphonies, including by Gustav Mahler. The group's occasional ticketed performances double as fundraisers; the Wagner concert will fund scholarships for the Youth Opera Company of the Opera Company of Middlebury.

Guest conductor Lou Kosma, who lives in Teaneck, N.J., is responsible for programming the challenging, 70-minute work. He played double bass with the Met Opera orchestra for 36 years, until 2014. Kosma performed Die Walküre many times — including alongside "the machine," the Met's infamous 45-ton set — as well as Act 1 in concert at the Salzburg Festival. For 25 years, Kosma has commuted to Vermont to conduct the Vermont Philharmonic and to perform with the OCM, Capital City Concerts, Burlington Choral Society and others.

"After having played [Die Walküre] for so many years at the Met, I really got excited about what it sounds like," Kosma explained by phone. He led the Mahler Fest in a first reading of Act 1 in 2018. That rehearsal featured the same three professional soloists who will appear this weekend in performance: soprano Elizabeth Perryman and tenor Adam Laurence Herskowitz (the Met singer), both of New Jersey; and Montpelier bass Erik Kroncke. The latter has sung the role of Hundig with five opera companies in New York and New Jersey and with the Wagner Society of New York.

After leading the orchestra through a second reading of Act 1 in 2022, Kosma recalled, "I thought, Yes, we should try to perform this." Audiences can expect to hear a significant brass section that includes tuben, an instrument Wagner invented. The conductor is finishing with the showstopping "Ride of the Valkyries" (from Act 3) featuring eight local sopranos and, he hinted, some creative staging.

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• Courtesy
• Eric Milnes

L'Harmonie's concert is likely to be a top-tier event, given Milnes' drive for musical perfection. The ensemble performs around Québec and Ontario, as well as in the U.S. and the UK; two of its six albums have won JUNO Awards — the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys.

Milnes, a harpsichordist, organist and conductor who lives near Montréal, also became music director of the College Street Congregational Church choir and the Vermont Choral Union in 2022. When he brought L'Harmonie to Burlington last December, choir members joined the ensemble for two sold-out performances of Handel's Messiah. Milnes chose 15 church choir members to join L'Harmonie's 15 on the Requiem program, which actually includes two Requiems — Fauré's and baroque-era Marc-Antoine Charpentier's.

Fauré composed his Requiem between 1887 and 1890, when instruments were still strung with animal gut. Unlike modern instruments with metal strings, Milnes explained by phone, period instruments' "timbre is warmer and darker, more blending with the voices, and they lend themselves to a more nuanced array of articulations."

The warmth of sound will be matched by Fauré's warm approach to the standard Latin mass for the dead, from which he selected texts but not the "Dies Irae," or Day of Wrath. The French agnostic thought that death should be portrayed as a peaceful end, not fire and brimstone.

It's a fitting tribute to Bill Harwood, the music-loving Burlington tenor who died on August 23. He sang with the College Street Congregational Church choir, Burlington Choral Society and Oriana (now Aurora Chamber) Singers. The concert is dedicated to him.