What happens when around 50 of Germany's best young voices come together to create rousing choral music at the highest level? When Renaissance meets sound experiments, Mahler meets percussion, love meets life? Then the Bundesjugendchor will be a guest at the Bergson Kunstkraftwerk - with a program that spans the spectrum from Josquin Desprez to Caroline Shaw. Sonically virtuosic, emotionally polyphonic and full of poetry.
The Bundesjugendchor, founded in 2021 under the umbrella of the German Music Council, has since established itself as a flagship of young German choral music. The ensemble develops challenging programs that regularly delight audiences on renowned stages such as the Elbphilharmonie or the Philharmonie Berlin. This choir stands for openness, excellence - and for a new generation of music-making.
With the current program "Love and Life. Poetic soundscapes from Josquin and Mahler to Shaw", the choir invites you on an extraordinary journey through times, styles and states of mind. Josquin Desprez's 24-part canon "Qui habitat in adjutorio " - a masterpiece of vocal polyphony - opens the evening like a musical mandala: complex, meditative, supernaturally beautiful.
Quite different, but just as moving: Gustav Mahler's "The Two Blue Eyes", in Clytus Gottwald's equally tender and dense 16-part a cappella arrangement. Here, the pain of letting go becomes a shimmering choral fantasy, the romantic world-weariness a vocal map of the stars.
The leap into the present is achieved with Caroline Shaw's Ochre, a work that draws on texts by Goethe, Tennyson, Josquin and the composer herself. It is a tonal sediment of language, rhythm and color - inspired by iron minerals, which merge here into a musical geology of feeling. Between the movements: Improvisations for choir and percussion with Nora Thiele - a dialog between voice, body and space.
Finally, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur's Le Cantique des Cantiques opens the sonic door to an ecstatic poem about love. The setting of the Old Testament Song of Songs is an expressive work full of sensuality, spiritual depth and French sound sophistication.
An evening that shows what vocal art can be today: highly intelligent and deeply moving.
Cast:
Federal Youth Choir
Florian Benfer, conductor
Nora Thiele, percussion
Program:
Josquin Desprez (c.1440-1521) Qui habitat in adjutorio
Canon for 24 voices
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) The two blue eyes
From: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, arranged for 16 voices a cappella by Clytus Gottwald
Caroline Shaw (*1982) Ochre (2022)
for choir and percussion; texts from various sources by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alfred Tennyson, Josquin Desprez and Caroline Shaw
I Siderite II Limonite III Maghemite IV Magnetite V Hematite VI Vivianite VII Geothite
Federal Youth Choir & Nora Thiele Resonance
Improvisation for percussion between voice, body and space
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002) Le Cantique des Cantiques (1952)
I Dialogue II La Voix du Bien-aimé III Le Songe IV Le Roi Salomon V Le Jardin clos VI La Sulamite VII Epithalame
Admission 15:30
Start: 16:00
End: 17:15
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