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The history of the Vienna Boys Choir, perhaps the most famed boys choir in the world, is rich and storied, dating back to the late Middle Ages. Yet the group is still relevant and contemporary today, many hundreds of years later.
Established in July 1498 with only a half-dozen voices, the choir has grown to include approximately 100 choristers who perform roughly 300 concerts each year in front of almost 500,000 people. Standouts such as Austrian composer Franz Schubert and the Haydn brothers, Joseph and Johann Michael, got their musical career start with the choir.
East End residents will get their chance to see what could possibly be the future superstars of classical music when members of the famed Vienna Boys Choir give a concert at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, December 11. The holiday-themed concert will be helmed by current choirmaster Andy Icochea Icochea and will be the choir’s only performance on Long Island before heading to perform at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.
Last week, Mr. Icochea gave a telephone interview from Europe, where he and the choir were in the midst of a very hectic touring schedule. Mr. Icochea, also a singer and pianist, has been choirmaster since 2005.
Born in Lima, Peru, he began his music studies at the age of 7. And though he now hails from across the globe, the choirmaster does
have some regional connections, as he earned a degree in Piano Performance from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. Mr. Icochea also studied orchestral conducting at the Vienna Konservatorium before undergoing a rigorous process to join the Vienna Boys Choir.
“To be choirmaster, I went through an audition,” he explained. “I played the piano, I played under different conductors, I had a personal interview. And then I conducted the choir in a rehearsal.”
The choirboys are also selected through a well-defined method, Mr. Icochea explained.
“The boys still are selected mainly from Austria but also from abroad. We select them both through the school in Vienna and through auditions,” he said.
A “healthy voice,” along with good general music skills, good rhythm and intonation, and well-developed concentration levels are some of the criteria needed for an aspiring young singer to become part of the Vienna Boys Choir.
The 100 or so choristers between the ages of 10 and 14 who are active each year are divided into four touring choirs. Each touring choir travels for 9 to 12 weeks, performing live shows most often around the holidays, and about a quarter of the boys are new each year to the choir itself, Mr. Icochea said. It’s a rewarding, if fast-paced process, that is well worth the effort, he added.
“During the year when we are on tour, we have rehearsals every day,” he said. “The rewards arrive when you are able to actually bring your singers from not knowing a piece of music at all to performance level. That process is very enjoyable, like creating any entity from scratch, but not by yourself, with the help of many other people, which is wonderful.”
The music that the choir performs is yet another important element of the complete picture.
“The program is divided into sections,” Mr. Icochea reported. “The first is dedicated to the regular repertoire that the choir performs—music from the Baroque era, the classical era, et cetera. In the second section, we have the music of Christmas, and traditional European Christmas songs. This year, we also have a Latin version of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,’ as I believe it is called in America.”
Mr. Icochea seemed equally enthusiastic about every piece of music on the choir’s set list. So much so that he was reluctant to name a favorite song or a standout voice in this year’s talented lineup of singers.
“It’s too difficult to pick ... For every part of the program affects people in some way,” he said.
The Vienna Boys Choir will perform a diverse, crowd-pleasing concert—which will include classical masterpieces, pop songs, medieval chants and holiday favorites—at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, December 11, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $55 to $85 and are available online at whbpac.org, in person at the box office at 76 Main Street in Westhampton Beach, or by telephone at 288-1500.
on Dec 7, 2010