Program

Music in the sign of freedom and hope: Under the theme

INNER & EXTERNAL FREEDOM, Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir takes a dramatic journey into the human mind when it is pushed to the edge due to faith and conviction.

Using the world of poetry as its starting point, the evening offers up a concert programme in which words and music blend into statements of longing, loneliness, existential awakening and hopes for the future.

The evening starts with Sven-David Sandström’s solo for horn, Lamento in Lontano, and is followed by Peter Gunnar Petersson’s dark and soulful suite, Aftonland. The lyrics to the suite are four poems from the Swedish Nobel laureate Pär Lagerkvist’s collection of poems of the same name. Lagerkvist’s existential poems and Petersson’s composition are performed by Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir.

Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir continues the evening with a Danish first performance of Lasse Thoresen’s piece Prison Poems. The texts of the composition are taken from the Iranian poet Mahvash Sabet’s collection of poems of the same name.

In 2008, Mahvash Sabet was arrested in her native Iran solely based on the fact that she is a member of the Bahá’í religious minority community. Two years later, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Imprisoned in one of Iran’s toughest prisons, Sabet wrote her poems on napkins and toilet paper. With the help of friends, the poems were smuggled out, edited, translated from Persian and published under the name Prison Poems.

These are powerful poems that reflect on desperation, hope and loneliness and, at the same time, reflect how, despite adversity, a person can grow strong in both faith and spirit – and this particular field of tension has inspired Lasse Thoresen in his composition of the music to Prison Poems.

Actress Karen-Lise Mynster recites the poems of Sabet in a Danish translation.

This concert is arranged in collaboration with NJORD – New Nordic Music Biennale, the publishing house Det Poetiske Bureaus Forlag, Danish PEN and Copenhagen Light Festival.

A special thanks to Secretary General of the Danish PEN, Mille Rohde.

In the Italian home in a small Scottish town, it was reportedly Abba and Bee Gees that they listened to. Nevertheless, as a very young girl, Nicola Benedetti got her hands on the violin. As early as at age 10, her colossal talent sent her to Yehudi Menuhin’s renowned talent school south of London. Here, Benedetti met the German cellist Leonard Elschenbroich who was also ten years old when he started studying here. The trio’s Ukrainian-born pianist, Alexei Grynyuk, also grew up as an extremely talented prodigy. Grynyuk gave his first public performance as a 6-year-old. Today, all three are established world stars. 

You will be met by romance of the highest calibre immediately from the opening tones of the concert. Robert Schumann wrecked his piano hands through the manic training of his fingers’ independent movement (he invented an instrument to force them apart) – but that did not stop him from composing supremely romantic chamber music for piano trio.

The romance is expressed in the insistence of the music on eliciting great emotions. Then there is a whisper, then there is a shout; the melodic material is persistently penetrating and sensual in its constant alternation between light and dark, major and minor, large orchestral and small and intimate. The slow third movement is bursting with trapped pain and sadness. Not even the fiery and triumphant last movement erases the impression of the seeking, romantic soul.

Wolfgang Rihm’s modern classic within the chamber music repertoire of 1980 is full of references to romantic feelings. There are no direct quotes from romantic composers but, in his own words, Rihm wanted to pursue the innermost powers of Schumann’s music, in particular. Violent bi-polar clashes between order and chaos provide a fantastic perspective on the 19th-century quest for new horizons: How would Schumann’s music have sounded if he had lived in the 1980s?

After a brief piano introduction, the cello presents the first theme of Brahms’ large-scale piano trio. Already in the first movement, it is teeming with thematic ideas and moods. The scherzo opens with a thick rocking theme in minor. The movement returns to major and leads to the adagio, which slows one’s heart rate all the way down. Subdued piano chords strike an almost mysterious vibe before the cello’s heat eclipses the serious nature of the movement. The soft piano chords end the movement. The fourth movement returns to minor and gives the work a dramatic ending with syncopated rhythms also emphasizing the seriousness and heaviness of the piano trio.

As you know, there are three big B’s in the world of composing. Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Of course, every season, these three masters are given significant prominence in our concert programme.

The last B has even been given its very own fixed performance: Brahms’ requiem in Phillip Moll’s edition has become a stable part of Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir’s spring programme.

It is not without reason that this magnificent work has always had a large fan base. It is melodic, warm and elegant; composed by Brahms at the peak of his abilities.

In 2017, Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir was granted permission by Rundfunkchor Berlin to use their new arrangement, written for choir and two performers on one piano. It has also previously been performed in this set-up – including by Brahms himself – but, especially in recent years, there has been a growing interest in exploring the requiem in a sleek, chamber music version where Brahms’ fantastic work on the voices of the choir is given its proper place of prominence.

Ein Deutsches Requiem consists of seven movements, all of which revolve around conveying a comfort to the survivors. Perhaps Brahms composed the work as a way of coping with the grief associated with the deaths of people close to him: His mother died in 1865, when he began the work, and his friend, Robert Schumann, had died a few years before that.

By the same token, Schumann had planned exactly what Brahms now undertook, namely a requiem in the German language. ‘German’ in the title of the work In fact refers to the language and not the German people. Brahms himself has said that he would gladly have called his requiem for ‘Ein menschliches Requiem’ if this had made his intention any clearer.

Ein Deutsches Requiem is performed by the two excellent Danish pianists, Rikke Sandberg and Tanja Zapolski, and with soloists of a high international standard.

Julian Rachlin’s extremely exciting career has brought him together with the world’s leading conductors and orchestras. He was born in Lithuania and immigrated to Austria in 1978 where he studied with Pinchas Zukerman, amongst others, who has previously visited the Mogens Dahl Concert Hall. Here, he performed as the youngest soloist of the Vienna Philharmonic. Today, he is active on several fronts. On the chamber music scene, he performs with partners such as Martha Argerich, Itamar Golan and Mischa Maisky. In addition, he regularly conducts the most famous symphony orchestras of the world.

Magda Amara is one of the most sought-after chamber musicians in Europe. She has worked with several members of the Vienna Philharmonic as well as musicians such as Andreas Ottensamer, Matthias Bartolomey, Michael Barenboim and Michaela Girardi. She has also regularly performed with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the National Philharmonic in Kiev and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.

Brahms’ songs ‘Regenlied’ and ‘Nachklang’  left their impressions  in the violin sonata in G major. Often, the sonata is called the ‘Rain Sonata’ for the same reason. Not only does the common melody from the two songs clearly stand out as the main theme of the third movement but consistently punctuated rhythms from Regenlied drip throughout sonata.

The wonderful sonata in f minor is composed for the clarinet and has since been arranged for viola by Brahms himself. Despite a fast and lively final movement, one is left with warm melancholy as the main impression.

The story behind Dvorak’s opus 75 begins with an attempt to write a trio for two violins and a viola – music that a live-in student and amateur musician could play along to. Over and over, this music evolved into these four romantic pieces that exude Brahms’ enthusiasm for writing music of the intimate chamber music genre.

With a calm first movement, César Franck lets the listener believe that everything Is peace and idyll. The explosive second movement and the introverted recitativo-fantasia bring completely different emotions into play and finally build up to a beautiful and quite serene final movement.

With several spectacular awards and releases on the resume, the Doric Quartet has established itself as one of the most significant quartets of its generation. They are now performing in leading concert halls, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Konzerthaus, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Louvre, Carnegie Hall and Kioi Hall Tokyo. In addition, they regularly perform at the Wigmore Hall.

The quartet was founded in 1998 and has recorded for Chandos Records since 2010. In 2019, they recorded Britten’s collected string quartets and received excellent reviews. Their Haydn recordings have also won great applause – including election of ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Gramophone and ‘Choc du Mois’ in Classica Magazine.

It is as if Haydn’s quartet, nicknamed ‘The Bird’, needs to take a preliminary run-up. Repeated tones and a marked cello bass line quickly establish that we are in C major. But, like a swift bird in the forest, the whole shebang suddenly moves to d minor before sweeping back. Small flicks in the first violin emphasize the ease and playfulness. But notice how the bird-like elements in the middle of the movement evolve into something that certainly doesn’t sound merely bright and happy.

In the final rondo of the finale, there Is plenty of folkloristic fieriness and clog dancing. The quartet ends high up in the blue sky in an ending that is more like a disappearance act than a solid full stop.

Mozart did NOT dedicate his three Prussian quartets to Friedrich Wilhelm II, who himself was an avid amateur cellist. In his notes, Mozart did write that they had been ordered by the king, but there are indications that no payment was ever made for the quartets. In any event, they were published after Mozart’s death without dedication. Paid for by the king in Berlin, or not: Rarely has a cello had such princely a voice in a string quartet.

Beethoven’s string quartet No 13 is performed here in the context of ‘Große Fuge’ (originally written as the 6th and last movement of string quartet No 13, but later published separately). It is great music, In every way, which Beethoven himself reverently referred to as his “dear” quartet. The beautiful melody of the cavatina could bring tears to eyes of Beethoven himself, despite the fact that the composer was completely deaf! Contemporaries regarded the concluding Große Fuge as “Babylonian confusion” and “As incomprehensible as Chinese” but, today, it is widely regarded as Beethoven’s biggest achievement

Richard Goode is internationally recognized as one of the present’s leading interpreters of Beethoven’s piano pieces. He performs on a regular basis in Europe and the US and is a recurring soloist performing with some of the world’s finest orchestras.

The New York-residing pianist has recorded numerous of appraised albums including solo- and chamber music, to lieder and piano recitals. His recording of Beethoven’s piano recitals with The Budapest Festival Orchestra was in 2009 referred to as “a landmark recording” by Financial Times and even nominated for a Grammy. A box set of 10 CD’s containing The Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos was also nominated for a Grammy and selected for the “Gramophone Good CD Guide’.

There are numerous awards and appraisals for Goode’s virtuous interpretations of Beethoven – but he is also an acknowledged educator and mentor for the next generation of classical pianists. He teaches on a regular basis in New York and London and occasionally offers masterclasses at festivals and in concert halls in the US and Europe.

If Das wohltemperierte Klavier by Bach is “The Old Testament” of piano music, Beethoven’s piano sonatas is “The New”. Richard Goode has the last three of these masterpieces programmed for this concert – three sonatas which range widely in their expression, but also gathers around the late Beethoven’s most profound and original characteristics. There is an almost unheard level of pianistic skill, just as we experience an interest in the older musical forms as the fugue paired with innovative harmonic thinking.