Program

The dark timbre of the cello takes up a very special place in the heart of many music lovers. With the Norwegian master cellist Truls Mørk, accompanied by the piano phenomenon Behzod Abduraimov from Uzbekistan, you are in for an evening which – like the tones of the cello – will enter deeply into both your body and soul.

Truls Mørk has toured the whole world, and he has an impressive number of acclaimed records in his repertoire at companies such as Virgin Classics, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Ondine, Arte Nova, and Chandos. The grand prizes from Gramophone, Grammy, Midem and ECHO Klassik, have followed in a steady stream.

The prodigy Behzod Abduraimov from Uzbekistan studied in the US and has become a pianist that you cannot escape: All the big orchestras hire him in these years as a sure bet when it comes to virtuous and original performance of the grand piano-literature.

Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir
Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen
Mogens Dahl – conductor

Saturday the 7^thof September 2019 at 5.00 PM
Christians Kirke, Copenhagen

“The street is the house of prayer (oratorium) for protests, and the slogans of the street move into the church in this piece. Book of Prayers is not a traditional oratorio with one single narrative. It is a paraphrase of the genre with a starting point in the word orare – to pray.” This is how Niels Rønsholdt explains the point of his new piece, which is performed for the first time in cooperation with the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir,Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, and the Golden Days Festival.

Niels Rønsholdt is a composer and an artist of sound– trained partly in private by Lasse Laursen and Helmut Oehring and partly at Det Jyske Musikkonservatorium by Karl Aage Rasmussen, Bent Sørensen, Per Nørgård, and more. He has among other things composed a number of commission pieces for important festivals, publishers, and ensembles, such as the Akademie der Künste, Edition Wilhelm Hansen, TRANSIT Festival, and Den Jyske Opera.

Book of Prayers will shape as an ambiguous piece that both celebrates human devotion in prayer and at the same time displays the thought-provoking idea of praying rather than acting. It is a deeply felt portrait of hope that at the same time criticizes religion and criticizes political apathy and aggression, of which both prayer and slogan respectively can reflect.

The text for the oratorio originates from the Stasi’s systematic documentation of the slogans on the street in the dramatic months by the end of 1989 – made concrete in one specific notebook with the handwritten notes of Stasi-agents on the slogans of the October Revolution.

Camilla Tilling, Sopran & Paul Rivinius, Piano

A Swedish star soprano will, together with the fantastic German pianist Paul Rivinius, fill the Mogens Dahl Koncert Hall with wonderful lieds and songs from both the north and the south.

Camilla Tilling studied at the University of Gothenburg and at the Royal College of Music in London. After this followed a meteoric career that was jump-started at the New York City Opera and with subsequent debuts at the largest international opera scenes. The success has only continued – and that includes the chamber music, as Paul Rivinius is often found by her side.

It has been long since Paul Rivinius conquered Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, and many others… Earlier, he was a professor in chamber music in Berlin, but he is now a full-time touring musician with a base in Munich.

It is now possible for you to get very close to Vilde Frang’s seducing championship. When she was four years old, she already played the violin. As a ten-year-old, she performed with the radio orchestra of Norway, and as a twelve-year-old, she made it big internationally. Here, you will only be feet away from her at a chamber music concert, where she –in the company of a German star of the same age, Michail Lifits –will use her world known violin magic on Brahms, Schubert, and Bartok.

Vilde Frang’s career was partly strengthened by Anne-Sophie Mutter’s mentor role. And, her lightning speed road to stardom has all in all brought her to the international level –a place only occupied by a few others. Nonetheless, her playing is often described with words like “a child’s bliss” and “elven-like.”

Michail Lifits also reached the top quickly. He already has several first prizes on his resumé from international piano competitions, and he has been celebrated for his dazzling music on scenes such as Carnegie Hall, Salle Cortot, Wigmore Hall, and Tonhalle.

Kit Armstrong, piano

An extraordinary piano virtuoso, a mathematical genius, a unique composer – Kit Armstrong is in all ways one of a kind, and the intimate chamber concert with the American super-talent is going to be a spectacular encounter with a rare personality.

Kit Armstrong is 27 years old, but he has already completed an education which makes even seasoned polymaths dizzy. Already as a seven-year-old, he studied physics at California State University for the first time – while at the same time attending high school and being enrolled at the Chapman University as a student of composing. As a nine-year-old, he became a full-time student at Utah State University with courses in biology, physics, mathematics, and music. As a twelve-year-old, he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music – and it goes on and on like this. Today, he has graduated summa cum laude from both the Royal Academy of Music and the Marie-Curie University in Paris.

All of this happened while Kit Armstrong most unprecedentedly also took to the world as a celebrated pianist!

The young multi-artist could just as well have filled the program with his own compositions, but he has chosen a program that brings us through the basic but major works from the times of the piano’s childhood and youth.

Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir,
Søren Johannsen – organ, musicians from the DR-symphony orchestra,
Mogens Dahl – conductor

Sunday the 3^rdof November 2019 at 9.00 PM
Christians Kirke, Copenhagen

The first performance by Sweden’s internationally recognized composer, Sven-David Sandström, introduces the Halloween concert, rich in traditions, in Christians Kirke. As the “composer in residence,” he has now created several spectacular pieces written for and dedicated to the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir.

For this occasion, Sven-David Sandström has written the music for a text filled with humor and wisdom from the 17^thcentury, in which one of the phrases goes: “Help me stay somewhat amiable.” In other words, it is going to be an evening where the typical seriousness attached to man’s awareness of death is supplemented with a freeing lightness. Frailty, fulness of life, joy, laughter, sorrow: All of this is part of that life which is encircled– and infused with meaning – by death.

Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer – violinLawrence Dutton – viola, Paul Watkins – cello

The Times expressed it like this: “…with musicians such as these, there must be some kind of hope for humanity.” Otherwise, nine Grammys, three Gramophone-prizes, the Avery Fisher-prize, and the ’Ensemble of the Year’ in America of course speak for themselves about the victory lap of the Emerson String Quartet since their beginning in New York in 1976.

In the quartet’s 2019-season, they are still after 40 years the “quartet in residence” at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. They will perform as part of the “Chamber Music Society” in the Lincoln Center in New York and go on two great tours in Europe – where one of the tours leads them to this intimate concert in the Mogens Dahl Concert Hall.

PROGRAM:
G. F. Händel: The Messiah

Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
International soloists
Mogens Dahl – conductor

FRIDAY THE 6TH OF DECEMBER 2019 AT 7.30 PM
SATURDAY THE 7TH OF DECEMBER 2019 AT 7.30 PM
HOLMENS Kirke, Copenhagen

Year after year, the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir has tightened their grip on their very own version of Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has been an ideal co-player in the international project that offers the audience of Copenhagen an at once modern and loyal version of the oratorio, which to many is the ultimate Christmas music.

In 2019 it will be the 12th time Mogens Dahl conducts a crisp baroque orchestra, international soloist stars, and his own top-trimmed, professional choir, in a full Holmens Kirke.

PROGRAM:
G. F. Händel: The Messiah

Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
International soloists
Mogens Dahl – conductor

FRIDAY THE 6TH OF DECEMBER 2019 AT 7.30 PM
SATURDAY THE 7TH OF DECEMBER 2019 AT 7.30 PM
HOLMENS Kirke, Copenhagen

Year after year, the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir has tightened their grip on their very own version of Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has been an ideal co-player in the international project that offers the audience of Copenhagen an at once modern and loyal version of the oratorio, which to many is the ultimate Christmas music.

In 2019 it will be the 12th time Mogens Dahl conducts a crisp baroque orchestra, international soloist stars, and his own top-trimmed, professional choir, in a full Holmens Kirke.