Halloween Concert The Great Mystery

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

PROGRAM
Sven-David Sandström (1942 – 2019): Seventeenth Century Nun’s Prayer (2019) FIRST PERFORMANCE
Per Gunnar Petersson (f. 1954): Libera me (2000)
Olivier Messiaen:
L’Ascension, del 4 (for organ)
Prière du Christ montant vers son père
Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992): O sacrum Convivium (1937)
Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924): Requiem (1893)

The first performance by Sweden’s internationally recognized – and recently deceased – composer, Sven-David Sandström, introduces the Halloween concert, rich in traditions, in Christians Kirke. As the “composer in residence,” he has 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.