Program

MOGENS DAHL CHAMBER CHOIR
ATHELAS SINFONIETTA COPENHAGEN
SØREN JOHANNSEN – ORGAN
MOGENS DAHL – CONDUCTOR

Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir introduces a number of striking works by Alfred Schnittke in collaboration with Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and Golden Days Festival.

He was basically an unknown outside the Soviet Union until the early 80s and he was not popular amongst the ruling elite of his homeland. His music was found to be highbrow and elitist; however, after the Wall fell, he moved to Hamburg and, in no time, experienced being a great and well-known name.

The music of Alfred Schnittke unfolds in all genres and many styles. Best known is probably his suite in old-fashioned style, which was used as a DR P2 signature tune. This concert sees the performance of one of his rarer works: Lebenslauf (life story), in which the stubbornly ticking metronome plays a role, amongst others.

“Blinding in its purity and with so much natural energy”. The critic from the magazine Klassisk understood very well why the Belcea Quartet had shot to the top when they visited Mogens Dahl Koncertsal in 2009. The ensemble has impressed from the outset and was already, when the members were quite young, a ’quartet in residence’ of the London Wigmore Hall for all of five years.

The British quartet was founded by Rumanian Corina Belcea and Polish Krzysztof Chorzelski. Since then, the French musicians Axel Schacher and Antoine Lederlin have contributed to the national diversity of the Quartet.

Alice Coote has travelled from Northern England to operatic stages worldwide in no time at all. However, the lied repertoire has been central throughout her impressive career and she has long since given recitals at the largest venues in both Europe and the USA: Wigmore Hall (where she was the ’artist in residence’), BBC Proms, Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, Lincoln Centre and Carnegie Hall, to mention but a few.

In Mogens Dahl Koncertsal, the mezzosoprano introduces what she calls ’22 songs you cannot live without’. It is a repertoire which, in addition to a great singer, also requires a great pianist and you can call Julius Drake just that; he has become well-known to the Mogens Dahl Koncertsal audience. Besides his extensive activities as a performer, the extraordinary pianist is today a professor at the London Royal Academy of Music.

The Calidore Quartet’s ”deep reserves of virtuosity and irresistible dramatic instinct” (New York Times) and ”balance of intellect and expression” (Los Angeles Times) has won them recognition worldwide. The ensemble has been the subject of a rather extraordinary shower of prizes, to include the Avery Fisher Prize and the M Prize of $100,000, the world’s largest prize for chamber music. The Calidore Quartet regularly performs at the most prestigious venues – highlights of the 2017-18 season include debuts at the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall and BBC Proms as well as concerts in Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, Brussels, Cologne and Barcelona.

In October 2018, their debut album for Signum Records is released and contains the music played in this concert, which Calidore have titled ’Music and Conflict’.

MOGENS DAHL CHAMBER CHOIR, MOGENS DAHL – CONDUCTOR,
SØREN JOHANNSEN – ORGAN, LASSE MAURITZEN – HORN 

The Nobel prize winner Pär Lagerkvist’s last collection of poetry, ’Aftonland’, is the poetic starting point for a moving Halloween Concert with Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir. Lagerkvist’s poems are about death, as a kind of final solution to or relief from the heart’s restlessness. Lagerkvist is preoccupied with nature as a state and as a mirror of the soul, and it is this very special mood we seek to illuminate by adopting the very different approaches to the words taken by various composers.

Francesco Piemontesi’s first visit to Mogens Dahl Koncertsal took place in Autumn 2017, when he accompanied the cellist Daniel Müller-Schott at a tremendous performance of Brahms’ cello sonatas. The brilliant Swiss well-known by concert-goers worldwide – performing, amongst others, as a soloist with a number of the world’s best orchestras.

Not least his handle on Mozart and the early romantics has caused a stir. However, he also masters honest baroque to perfection. The Guardian describes his interpretation of Bach thus ”composer defeats ego, musical integrity defeats superficiality, persistent preparation defeats hopeful happenstance”.

It is now the 11th time Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir sing Christmas in with Händel’s most popular choral work – the magnificent oratorio Messiah. This traditional concert in Holmen’s Church has been praised to the heavens by all reviewers, who have fallen in love with Mogens Dahl’s slender and crisp Baroque edition.

★★★★★★
“Mogens Dahl’s outstanding Messiah” wrote Berlingske’s reviewer Søren Schauser, and adorned it with six stars following the performance where the British Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment contributed for the first time in 2016. Politiken was also enthusiastic: “It was simple, beautiful and redeeming,” wrote Thomas Michelsen.

★★★★★★
Danish daily Berlingske 2017

★★★★★★
Danish daily Kristeligt Dagblad 2017

It is now the 11th time Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir sing Christmas in with Händel’s most popular choral work – the magnificent oratorio Messiah. This traditional concert in Holmen’s Church has been praised to the heavens by all reviewers, who have fallen in love with Mogens Dahl’s slender and crisp Baroque edition.

★★★★★★
“Mogens Dahl’s outstanding Messiah” wrote Berlingske’s reviewer Søren Schauser, and adorned it with six stars following the performance where the British Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment contributed for the first time in 2016. Politiken was also enthusiastic: “It was simple, beautiful and redeeming,” wrote Thomas Michelsen.

★★★★★★
Danish daily Berlingske 2017

★★★★★★
Danish daily Kristeligt Dagblad 2017