News
Riga and Berlin
06.11.2008Following the successful Schütz & Distler project, it was again time for contemporary music and international relations. The Nederlands Kamerkoor set off to Riga and Berlin to give several joint concerts with their choral colleagues based in both cities. This all had to do with Tenso, the international association which annually organizes a festival in the home city of one of the founders of Tenso: the RIAS Kammerchor from Berlin, Accentus from Paris, the Latvian Radio Choir from Riga and the Nederlands Kamerkoor from Amsterdam.
This time the three-day festival took place in Riga, in the Great Hall of the University of Latvia. The programme contained several new works, including two by Santa Ratniece and Peter Jan Wagemans, both recently commissioned by the Nederlands Kamerkoor. As a special bonus there was a performance of a work for four choirs by Steffen Schleiermacher, and to conclude the assembled choirs sang the Three Sacred Hymns by Alfred Schnittke. The next day the entire company flew to Berlin for a concert in celebration of the 60th birthday of the RIAS Kammerchor.
The most recent works from the programme were performed to a wildly enthusiastic and very involved audience. The Berlin newspapers were full of praise for this event put on by three of the finest chamber choirs in Europe.
Der Tagesspiegel had this to say:
“A large chamber choir: numerically that would appear to be a paradox. But when 72 professionals from three elite chamber choirs combine to celebrate the Sacred Hymns of Alfred Schnittke, the experience is remarkable. The music sounds Russian, as if designed for the coronation of Boris Godunov – archaic, powerful – and yet the specific sound of a chamber choir remains intact. With this ultimate example of individualism we were dismissed from the Radialsystem V out into the night-time Friedrichshain by them: the Nederlands Kamerkoor, the Latvian Radio Choir and the RIAS-Kammerchor. Under the conductors Kaspars Putnins, Sigvards Klava, Jörg Genslein and Hans-Christoph Rademann, they had got the audience stamping their feet in unanimous enthusiasm. And with a programme which was no picnic, with mainly 21st-century music, experimental.”
The Berliner Morgenpost wrote of the Nederlands Kamerkoor:
“The ink was still wet on the exotic composition Horo Horo Hata Hata by the young female Latvian composer Santa Ratniece, the piece with which the Dutch choir astounded the audience. Strange prayer chants of the Ainu tribe mingled with the cries of birds and wild animals. ....”
The Tagesspiegel was no less lavish with its poetic descriptions:
“Firstly rhythmical delicacies from Peter Jan Wagemans were scattered over texts of Mallarmé, which made the listener’s head buzz. Then a commissioned work, a courageous sound composition by Santa Ratniece, which with its twelve parts employs the whole choir as soloists: Horo Horo, from soft whispering to extraordinary wailing at a great height: spell-binding.”
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