By ELIZABETH SUMMERHAY
Some of BYU’s top performing ensembles: the University Singers, Concert Choir and Philharmonic Orchestra, will perform “The Redeemer” on Wednesday at 7:30 in the de Jong Concert Hall.
“This is one of the best groups to ever perform it [the Redeemer],” said Ronald Staheli, the conductor.
The group is doing a recording session the day after the performance, he added.
“I think it is a wonderful opportunity to do it with our students, our select choirs and select orchestra, because then I think we can give it the performance the piece really deserves.”
“The Redeemer” is a choral-orchestra work written by Latter-day Saint composer Robert Cundick. It is about the prophesies and life of Jesus Christ.
“We don’t have many wonderful, large compositions for chorus and orchestra. It is really a major effort by a major composer in the church,” Staheli said.
“This program is definitely the greatest piece ever created in LDS music and perhaps one of the top pieces ever written anywhere in the 20th century,” said Clayne Robison, the soloist who will perform the role of Christ, according to a press release.
“It’s a very reserved style. It’s a very grand style of music, but there’s not a lot of brazen dissonance … it’s beautiful,” Staheli said. “It’s got a breadth of profundity that is quite remarkable.”
Although the piece will probably stay within the LDS performance circle, it has broad appeal, Staheli said.
“It really has quite a universality about it in terms of appeal simply because it is a testimony of Christ being the Savior of the world,” Staheli said.
“This is a testimony about Christ. You have the words from prophets, Old Testament, and Book of Mormon — a lot of Book of Mormon prophets prophesied about the coming of the Savior, His mission, His Atonement, the sacrifice of the Atonement and the promise for what is to come because of His Atonement,” Staheli said.
“I don’t think there are many songs that come from all four standard works. Most songs we have sung in choir, we have had to change the text a little to match our beliefs. So this has been such a joy for me,” said Krista Redd, a junior from Farmington.
The chorus sings almost exclusively from the Book of Mormon, but there are quotations from all four standard works, Staheli said.
“Music can convey a message that sometimes words can’t do. It’s really fun, a sort of joyful thing,” Redd said.
“Every time this piece is performed a special magic happens that I’m quite unprepared for,” Cundick said, according to a press release.
Staheli said the music has a special ability to communicate.
“Sometimes the music is really overwhelming. It is so wonderful that sometimes it is a little bit of a fight to retain control. The moods of the music are so profound and so moving,” Staheli said. “It is so wonderful because the value of music allows us to understand what we can only understand at a feeling level … The music is so well written, so profound that it aids and deepens one’s understanding.”
“The main point of it that other religions aren’t able to convey is the power of the Atonement … The actual message is so incredible, it is different than most songs I have ever sung.” Redd said.
