This is a chorus with big goals and big ideas. The Litchfield County Choral Union was started in 1899 by the Battell family — “people from Norfolk with iron and railroad interests,” says Gaile Binzen, a soprano member of the group since 1974.
In the very beginning, the director would go to a different town every week to rehearse members for a concert scheduled for the last Sunday in July. They performed in the concert shed built, Binzen said, for the chorus.
But these days, singers, roughly 70 or so, come to the director, Jonathan F. Babbitt, who rehearses them in the Music Shed on Tuesday nights. In recent years, Babbitt has directed the group in everything from big opera choruses from “Carmen,” “Madama Butterfly,” “Il Trovatore,” war horses as Binzen put it, to the great vocal works by Mozart, Bruckner, Rutter. One year, Babbitt scheduled songs of the Civil War, a concert which included “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” from the 1860s.
“That was a hard sell,” Binzen said. Membership wavered.
This year, Babbitt says, “I like to remind people of what else is happening in the world.” Like the American Revolution. And so, all the choral works and solo arias on the program were written by Mozart in 1776, a year that included the great Piano Concerto No. 9, which will be played by Raymond Buttero.
The Litchfield County Choral Union, with the Litchfield County Choral Union Festival Orchestra, will perform in the Music Shed at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, July 26 at 3 p.m. For reservations and information, call 860-868-0739.
