News Release
September 1998
The Moravian College Music Department will celebrate the
250th anniversary of the Single Brethren's House with a public concert
on Saturday, October 3, at 8 p.m. in Peter Hall. The Single Brethren's
House served as the home for single men in the 18th-century Moravian
community, a Revolutionary War hospital, the home of the Seminary for
Young Ladies in the 19th century, and, since 1956, the home of the College's
Music Department. The house is located in historic Bethlehem at the
corner Church and Main streets.
The concert celebrates the long Moravian musical heritage
by including works by Moravian composers as well as non-Moravian works
performed in the Moravian community, particularly pieces by composers
popular in the Bethlehem Philharmonic Society archives.
The concert will include performances by faculty and students.
Works scheduled include the rarely heard aria by Mozart "Schon
lacht der holde Frühling," performed by Dr. Yvonne Robinson,
soprano; Linda Kistler, violin; and Robert Steelman, piano. Also included
are several works for organ, which will be performed upon the newly
installed Samuel Green organ (1795), on long-term loan from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (NY) Musical Instrument Collection. This is the only known
surviving organ built by Green in the United States, and one of the
oldest organs in the Lehigh Valley. Performing on the organ will be
Lou Carol Fix, the organ instructor at the College and director of music/organist
at Salem U.C.C. in Allentown.
Other works and performers include: Beethoven Piano Trio
in c minor, op. 1/3 (students Kimberly Buschta, Emily Rideout, and Jennifer
Smull), Devienne's Flute Trio No. 4 (students Jessica Kistler, Nicole
Stevenson, and Heather Strizalkowski), selections from Herbst's Hymns
to be Sung at the Pianoforte (student Angela Voyajolu), and an aria
dedicated to Emma Cecelia Thursby (student Rebekah Graver). Dr. Debra
Torok of the College's piano faculty, who is currently preparing to
record the complete piano music of contemporary composer Norman Dello
Joio, will dedicate the Department's brand-new Steinway piano with a
performance of Dello Joio's Capriccio on the interval of a second. The
program concludes with a performance of an anthem by the best-known
Moravian composer, Johann Friedrich Peter (1746-1813). The anthem was
edited for modern performance by Dr. Carol Traupman-Carr, Assistant
Professor of Music, and will be performed by the Collegium Vocalis,
under the director of Professor Emeritus Richard Schantz, founder of
the Moravian College Choir.
Tickets will be available at the door. The cost is $8
general admission, $5 for senior citizens, children 12 and under, and
students. Moravian College faculty, staff, and students are admitted
free.
