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Summer concert 2019 : Reflection

Sunday 30 June 2019, at 15.15 Lokhorstkerk, Pieterskerkstraat 1, Leiden

Rising from a dark cool pond, she found the light and opened gladly her golden heart. She now rests peacefully on the water, thinking …

This image of a water lily comes from a poem of Frederik van Eeden and put to music by Herman Strategier. It is the essence of our summer concert with the theme reflection. A contemplative programme and the first major concert of Leiden Chamber Choir with our new director Dody Soetanto.

Quatre Motets pour un temps de pénitence by Francis Poulenc forms the heart of our programme. These motets are based on Biblical texts and are about penitence. Before penitence, there is always reflection. Religious and secular works from different periods form the leaves around this golden heart. All of them allow reflections in their own way.

Miserere by Alessandro Scarlatti and O vos omnes are two sacred works from renaissance. We will sing the latter in two different adaptations: by Tomás Luis de Victoria and Carlo Gesualdo. They are accompanied by religious music by contemporary composers: the mesmerising In Pace by René Clausen and De profundis by the Belgian composer Vic Nees , a supplication from man to God, literally ‘from the deep’.

Water is like a mirror that invites us to take a better look at ourselves. It is an ever returning image in poetic texts of secular music like The Blue Bird by Charles Villiers Stanford. Water is also the source of our lives. It is for a reason that we sing Edward Elgar’s Death on the hills : ‘There, let the old drink water.’

From the contemporary composer Eric Whitacre we sing two contemplative works: Water Night en Go, Lovely Rose. His contemporary Morten Lauridsen builds a bridge between works from different periods of our concert with Ov’è, Lass’, Il Bel Viso?. He was inspired by the secular madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo.

Reflection is the basis of being better tomorrow than today. That is a nice thought to start the summer with, a time that invites us to think about life and dreams. Apart from that, Reflection is just a delightful concert with beautiful music to enjoy.

Tickets: 12€ (childeren < 18 free) including program and a drink during the intermission.
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