Dutch Cham­ber Choir (NL)

Romantic, modern and contemporary England

«Songs of Farewell» - Howells, Macmillan, Parry

Stefano Gervasoni: «The world grown dark», commissioned by the festival

For almost a hundred years, the Nederlands Kamerkoor, which Peter Dijkstra took over as director in 2015, has been an absolute reference in the world of choirs. After its brilliant appearance in 2008 with the premiere of Oscura Luce by Denis Schuler, it returns to Freiburg to tell in words and music of the suffering of the First World War as experienced by two major figures in the choral world in England. Hubert Parry, who did not live to see the end of this first great world catastrophe, responded in his Songs of Farewell to the deaths of several of his students from the Royal College of Music in London who lost their lives on the battlefield. Herbert Howells originally intended the Requiem to commemorate the British soldiers who had died in the trenches of northern France, but the work took on an additional dramatic dimension when he was forced to watch helplessly as his nine-year-old son died of polio. Stefano Gervasoni, one of the leading representatives of the contemporary music scene, who is giving the Nederlands Kamerkoor the opportunity to perform a new world premiere on Freiburg soil with a work commissioned by the festival, was also inspired by this theme and set to music in The World Grown Dark several simple yet touching quotations from letters and diaries by Tommies who were at the front in Flanders and Artois. The Tenebrae Responsories, which James MacMillan composed in 2006 in the spirit of Renaissance masters such as Gesualdo and Victoria, have no direct reference to the First World War, but express an equally moving dramatic reality: the personal sacrifices that we are capable of making - for love.

Peter Dijkstra, conductor

Bethany Shepherd, Varvara Tishina, soprano

Elsbeth Gerritsen, alto

William Knight, tenor

Jasper Schweppe, bass