RICHARD HYNSONRICHARD HYNSON has contributed to the Greater Milwaukee community as conductor, composer, and teacher for the past sixteen years. He has served as Music Director for the Bel Canto Chorus and Orchestra of Milwaukee since 1988. He was the Conductor of the Waukegan (IL) Symphony Orchestra from 1990 to 1998. As founder and Music Director of the new performing ensemble Theater of Sound, he has offered in-school and family concerts both in Wisconsin and Illinois since 1998.Also in demand as a guest conductor, Hynson’s past engagements include performances with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Skylight Opera Theatre, and the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra. During the summer of 1997, Hynson and members of Bel Canto International and the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra performed at the internationally acclaimed Spoleto Music Festival in Italy at the invitation of the Festival’s founder, Gian Carlo Menotti. In February 1998, Hynson and the Bel Canto Choral Artists performed with Luciano Pavarotti at the United Center in Chicago. Bel Canto International toured France in July 1999, performing 20th century works by North American composers, including the European premiere of Hynson’s new work Evensong. On June 4, 2000, Hynson made his Carnegie Hall conducting debut performing Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem for MidAmerica Productions. Hynson and Bel Canto International will travel to England and Wales to give a series of performances and to compete in the prestigious international Llangollen Choral Competition. Most recently, Hynson and Bel Canto performed at the Huntsville and Elora Festivals in Ontario, Canada, in July 2003. Hynson will guest conducted the Racine Symphony Orchestra in June and October, 2005, and will conduct the Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra in May, 2006. He led a masterclass for the Association of Wisconsin Area Kodaly Educators in February, 2006.Some recent reviews:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)REVIEWMetaphors of grace resound in choral program
Bel Canto concert harnesses lively acoustic for air of mysticism
TOM STRINI Journal Sentinel music critic Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Published: May 20, 2007The Bel Canto Chorus, candles in hands, sang the medieval chant "Lumen ad revelationem" to open its concert Saturday evening. The hair-trigger acoustics of the chapel of the St. Joseph’s Center intensified each tone. The electric air crackled when they split into two parts, in the style of medieval organum. Music director Richard Hynson took it further still, by swathing the simple chant in glowing, Impressionist chords. It was beautiful and smart. "Lumen" was a microcosm of the program, which surveyed centuries of music and texts in which harmony and light are metaphors for Christian grace. (Narrator Martin Heabler interpolated readings pertaining to light in the Creation myths of other cultures.)
Hynson and his singers commanded the seven a cappella works from a high place. Precise attacks, good balance, fully supported tone and, most important, exquisite intonation let harmonies bloom. The words were largely lost in this acoustic, as was the counterpoint in Thomas Tallis’ "O nata lux de lumine." But the shimmering sound, the stuff of godly presence, more than made up for the losses.
It came and went with the quality of the music. Rachmaninoff got to the candle-lit, chiaroscuro version of it in a bit of the "All Night Vigil." (The soft but substantial singing of the basses worked the magic.) Holst’s "Nunc dimittis" started veiled in mystery and ended ablaze in high harmony.
William Harris’ "Bring us, O Lord God" and Charles Wood’s "Hail! Gladding Light" were a little too Sunday-morning Protestant for the mystic ambitions of this program. And their chords shifted too quickly for this long-decay room. (Which raises my one quibble with Hynson: I wish he’d played the room more, and let cadential chords die away before moving on.) John Rutter’s "Hymn to the Creator of Light" opened with intoxicating, luminescent stacks of chromatics but settled disappointingly into conventional hymnody.
Morten Lauridsen’s "Lux Aeterna," a suite of sacred texts for chorus and orchestra, also disappointed. I love Lauridsen’s "O Magnum Mysterium," chord after chord aquiver on the cusp of consonance and dissonance. "Lux Aeterna" has some of that, but also much John Williams-type self-conscious uplift. Hynson and friends lavished generous skill and affection on the magical and the mundane and made the most of both.E-mail Tom Strini at
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Copyright 2007, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)Copyright, 2007, Journal Sentinel, All Rights Reserved.Eighth Notes: by Erik Eriksson for Peninsula Pulse 5/18/07 ATTN: David Eliot
A joyous re-birth, “A Renaissance Event,†took place last Saturday night in Milwaukee. After a period in which financial and personnel issues had to be resolved, the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra had been quiescent. Indeed, many thought that the orchestra had seen its final days. However, last year’s appointment of Richard Hynson as MCO music director (he is also Music Director of the Bel Canto Chorus, one of the Milwaukee area’s most exciting and musically alert classical institutions) injected a new measure of drive and enthusiasm and the fruits of his efforts (as well as those of many others) were vividly in evidence in the orchestra’s happy return to live performance.The board chose to offer the public a free performance at the Calvary Presbyterian Church in downtown Milwaukee, whose large sanctuary with comfortable folding chairs instead of pews held just the right measure of interior volume to balance resonance and clarity. A large contribution from POLANKI, the Polish Women’s Cultural Club of Milwaukee, made possible inclusion of three spectacular works by important Polish composers, lending the concert an extra measure of interest.With a solid body of players to populate the string orchestra called for in this quintet of works, several from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the revitalized ensemble had the means to play some very demanding music.
First, a Concerto for String Orchestra by Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1948) revealed a stunning voice, a composer able to create dark, dense, riveting sounds assembled with inerrant skill and logic. Hynson and the MCO attacked the score with fire and conviction, drawing stormy applause at the work’s end. How a composer of such quality can be so little known outside her native country is a source of wonder. Henryk Górecki’s name is well-known, largely due to the unexpected success of his Third Symphony, a classical hit world-wide. Here, his “Three Pieces in the Old Style†made another striking impression, bubbling, beatific, radiant and energetic by turns. “Orawa†by Wojciech Kilar (b. 1932) unfolds “Boleroâ€-like, a simple pastoral violin theme growing and expanding to a huge climax. Led and played vigorously, it pulled the capacity audience to its feet to offer a standing ovation – before intermission.The second half held the local premier of Nancy Bloomer Deussen’s lovely “Peninsula Suite,†an evocation of the San Francisco Bay region. It impressed as high quality movie music, sweeping and songful, superbly crafted and scored. Finally, Hynson shaped Tchaikovsky’s familiar Serenade for Strings in C with such freshness, it seemed a first-time experience. At the end, another standing ovation.Throughout the program, Hynson’s direction was faultless and energizing and, aside from a few passing moments of unsettled intonation, his players performed wonderfully. This institution can now face the future with a resounding public endorsement. That’s good.A native of Washington, DC, Hynson has studied orchestral conducting Gerhard Samuel and Bernard Rubenstein. He has participated in ASOL conducting workshops led by Daniel Barenboim, Gustav Meier, and Otto-Werner Mueller. He attended the DePauw University Music School (IN) and Westminster Choir College (NJ), completing a DMA in choral conducting at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati in 1986.
