The Chorale performs at Congregation Shaare Emeth for the first time and gives St. Louis audiences a unique opportunity to hear a live performance of Handel’s virtuoso setting of Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus. Handel’s earliest surviving choral work was written in his first sojourn to Italy as a young man. His mastery of the Italian Baroque string style, a hallmark of Handel’s writing, is evident in this outstanding nine movement work for chorus, soloists, and string orchestra.

Also on this program are Randall Thompson’s beautiful The Lord Is My Shepherd and John Rutter’s lyrical setting of Psalm 128, Wedding Canticle. Eric Whitacre’s Five Hebrew Love Songs are settings of poems by Hila Plittmann. Ms. Plittmann, now the wife of Mr. Whitacre, was his fiance at the time these poems were written. Ballet forms a perfect marriage with the music of Whitacre, Thompson, and Rutter.