ConcertPulse
Guest performance
Philharmonie Berlin, Chamber Music Hall (Berlin)
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The Eric Ericson Chamber Choir was founded in 1945 by the then 27-year-old Eric Ericson, and has since then occupied a central place in Swedish and international music life. The choir ranks among the absolute top tier of professional ensembles internationally, and since 2003, the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir has had a close collaboration with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at Konserthuset.The choir's repertoire is very broad and spans from the Renaissance to the present day. In this concert, the choir has chosen to focus on the great German-speaking Romantic composers such as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and Johannes Brahms, but also the lesser-known Peter Cornelius.The Eric Ericson Chamber Choir is led by guest conductor Justin Doyle, chief conductor of the prestigious RIAS Kammerchor in Berlin, where he also works as a professor of choral conducting at the Hanns Eisler School of Music.
Really old and extremely lively: For many seasons now, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has been demonstrating how thrilling music from the 17th to the early 19th century can sound in its own series at the Konzerthaus Berlin.Bach's „St Matthew Passion“ was premiered for the second time in 1829 - in the Singakademie building in Berlin, which is now home to the Maxim Gorki Theatre. The conductor was Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who was only twenty years old. He paved the way for a Bach renaissance with the version he arranged and shortened. In the era of Viennese Classicism, Bach's music had simply hardly ever been performed. The Passion, however, which was first presented to the congregation of St Thomas' Church in Leipzig in 1727, is one of the most haunting musical depictions of the story of the crucifixion.
Haydn's composition is characterised by a dramatic, extremely moving emotionality that is hard to resist. It was initially conceived as a purely instrumental composition - meditation music in seven slow movements with a prelude and final movement („Il Terremoto“ - the earthquake) for a Passion service. However, when Haydn heard an arrangement of his work with a German text in Passau in 1794, he was inspired to write his own vocal version. The premiere took place in Vienna in 1796. With the flourishing of choral societies in the 19th century, this vocal version of the Seven Words became one of the most frequently performed pieces of Passion music ever.
