THIS CONCERT HAS BEEN CANCELED - HOMMAGE A INGVAR LIDHOLM
At last we have an opportunity to pay tribute here in Berwaldhallen to Ingvar Lidholm, one of the foremost Swedish composers of our time, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2021. The internationally successful Swedish choral conductor Sofi Jeannin joins up once again with the Swedish Radio Choir to provide us with a wonderful taste of Lidholm’s great treasure trove of choral music, from the epoch-making Laudi to the renowned …a riveder le stelle. This celebratory programme is crowned by Mattias Sköld’s birthday tribute to Lidholm, Praise.
The concert begins with a conversation between music critic Camilla Lundberg, conductors Herbert Blomstedt and Anders Eby and soprano Marie Alexis.
Participants
32 professional choristers make up the Swedish Radio Choir: a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world. The Swedish Radio Choir performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, as well as on tours all over the country and the world. Also, they are heard regularly by millions of listeners on Swedish Radio P2, Berwaldhallen Play and globally through the EBU.
The award-winning Latvian conductor Kaspars Putniņš was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir in 2020. Since January 2019, its choirmaster is French orchestral and choral conductor Marc Korovitch, with responsibility for the choir’s vocal development.
The Swedish Radio Choir was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Kaspars Putniņš first album with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.
Sofi Jeannin is Music Director of the BBC Singers since 2018 and director of the Maîtrise de Radio France since March 2008. With an easy authority and wide familiarity across various styles and genres, she is a frequent guest conductor with choirs and orchestras around the world. She was formerly the Music Director of the Chœur de Radio France between 2015 and 2018 and has taught choral conducting at the Conservatoire d’Évry.
She is invited to conduct ensembles such as the New Japan Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Victor Hugo Franche-Comté, Arad Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, Chamber Choir Ireland, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and S:t Jacob Chamber Choir in Stockholm. In August 2017, she made her debut at the BBC Proms, with the BBC Singers and the City of London Sinfonia.
She studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, at the Conservatoire de Nice under Bernard Dutour du Salvert among others, and at the Royal College of Music under Paul Spicer, Neil Thompson and David Willcocks. She has received honours including Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and Chevalier des Palmes Académiques for her artistic merits.
Programme
Soloist: Jennie Eriksson Nordin, soprano.
Soloist: Maria Klein.
Soloists:
Lars Johansson Brissman, barytone
Michael Engström, piano
Soloist: Anna Graca, alto.
Ingvar Lidholm’s music presents us with stirring harmonies and the eternal questions. This may be especially true for his choral compositions, which he developed from the age of twenty in collaboration with Eric Ericson and his chamber choir.
Lidholm borrowed a passage from the end of “Inferno”, the first part of Dante Alighieri’s major epic poem La Divina Commedia/The Divine Comedy, where Dante has followed his guide Virgil through the circles of hell before emerging via a hidden path … a rivider le stelle/to see the stars again and is moved by the promise of Heaven. These words, and the stanzas leading up to them, are the subject of Lidholm’s fourteen-minute-long choral piece.
The work was first performed by the Swedish Radio Choir and Eric Ericson’s Chamber Choir in 1974 with the solo parts sung by Marianne Mellnäs. It is a seminal contribution to the Swedish choral canon.
This is a tour de force in terms of drama and tonality, and although the melodic and harmonious elements are more prominent here than in Lidholm’s earlier work, it is full of tricky intervals, tonal clashes and major rhythmical and dynamic contrasts.
The altos and sopranos begin fortissimo and with frequent glissandi on the vowel “A”. The text is introduced by the basses on ma la notte resurge (but night is rising once more), after which the sopranos and altos join in. On this resounding start follows a milder, more sonorous polytonal section as Dante and Virgil are moving closer to the light.
After a general pause halfway through the piece, the wanderers are approaching the gates of Heaven. The light they encounter is reflected in shimmering chords consisting of up to 32 voices, then suddenly, like a strange homecoming, the choir strikes an unexpected, harmonious C-sharp chord on a rivider le stelle.
The soprano solo does not appear until the end. Accompanied by long, drawn out chords, a wordless, poetic melody rises towards the bright, open sky.
Anna Hedelius
Approximate concert length: 1 hour, no intermission
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The concert will be broadcasted at the Swedish Radio P2, Friday, February 11 at 7:03
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