Spring Concert 2023 Fiesta de la Música

Saturday evening, June 3, 2023, 8:30 p.m.
Leids Kamerkoor, conductor Dody Soetanto
Peter Church, Lammenschansweg 40a, Leiden

The Leids Chamber Choir is 35 years old! We celebrated this with a rousing music festival featuring orchestra and soloists. The program included three works with distinct character.

Inspired by a mystical medieval poem, composer Ola Gjeilo lets the choir engage in a dialogue with the piano and the string orchestra in Dark Night of the Soul. At times the piano accompanies the choir, at other times the roles are reversed. The emotions of the poem unfold in various musical spheres – from longing to grace.

With his Chichester Psalms, composer Leonard Bernstein steps outside the established conventions. Psalms and a church organ? Yes, of course! But Bernstein adds harp, percussion and strings, and above all his own idiosyncratic style. His Chichester Psalms are now overwhelming, enchanting and always surprising.

We concluded the fiesta de la música with a festive mass. Martín Palmeri gave his Misa a Buenos Aires the nickname Misatango not without reason. Accompanied by accordion, piano and a string orchestra, this mass swings from the Kyrie to the Agnus Dei. The notes dance the tango until they find peace in the final measures of Dona nobis pacem.

 

Program
Ola Gjeilo – Dark Night of the Soul
Leonard Bernstein – Chichester Psalms
Martín Palmeri – Misa in Buenos Aires