This welcome affirmation will be made when the Choral Society of the Hamptons and the South Fork String Ensemble perform on Sunday at 3 p.m. at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.
“For Lo, the Winter Is Past — A Spring Concert” will be “a celebration of spring’s arrival after a long Hamptons winter,” according to a release. Each of the four choral pieces, which span two and a half centuries, has a joyful theme. “Fortuitously, the official end of winter this year comes on March 20,” wrote Daniel K. McKeever, president of the society’s board of directors, “and the concert is the next day, Sunday, March 21.”
Walter Klauss, who has a house in East Hampton and is the music director of Musica Viva in New York City, will return as guest conductor. Since 1976, Mr. Klauss has been minister of music at All Souls Church in New York City, and he continues to make appearances as a conductor and organist, most recently as a recitalist with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra performing Jean Langlais’s “Piece en Style Libre” at the Tonhalle in Zurich.
The newest work that will be performed on Sunday will be Daniel Pinkham’s “Wedding Cantata,” composed in 1959, which is the choral setting for the biblical verses from the Song of Solomon and “not only a tribute to spring, but a tender and moving love song.”
Also on the program will be “a complex work for chorus and soloists full of rhythmic and harmonic surprises” by Jan Dismas Zelenka called Magnificat in D major. Mozart’s Missa Brevis in D, “a compact six-part setting of the Mass,” which “sparkles with vivid and intricate contrapuntal passages,” will be performed, and Handel’s “As Longs the Hart for Flowing Streams,” which evokes Psalm 42, will close the concert with “a prolonged, joyous alleluia chorus.”
Soloists joining the chorus will be Adam Alexander, bass, who sings with Musica Viva and “lends his voice and unique physicality to various mediums, including opera, cabaret, and anything with swords”; Martin Doner, tenor, who has appeared in some 50 productions of Bach’s oratorios and is a specialist in Baroque music, particularly the works of Bach and Carl Orff; Barbara Fusco, a mezzo-soprano who has performed throughout the United States, South America, Europe, and Africa, including two concerts tours of Zimbabwe, and who is on the voice faculty at Long Island University, and Nonie Schuster-Donato, a soprano, who has been a soloist with Musica Viva since 1989.
Although the chorus “can’t promise that the rain will be over and gone (or the turtledoves will be singing),” Mr. McKeever wrote, “we can offer you a lively, varied program to celebrate the new season.”
Tickets cost $30 for adults, $10 for those under 18, and can be purchased at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor, online at the society’s Web site, ChoralSocietyoftheHamptons.org, or by calling 204-9402. E.D.H.