Autumn concert with Lille MUKO

Address

Kastruplundgade 5,
Kastrup

Autumn concert with Lille MUKO

Description

The university choir Lille MUKO is a prominent classical choir from Copenhagen. The choir consists of current and former music students as well as other qualified singers. The choir is affiliated with the University of Copenhagen, where it often performs in a representative capacity on official occasions. The concert opens with John Tavener's beautiful church music and closes with three songs connected to autumn from Matti Borg's (who turned 70 this year) collection of choral songs to texts by Celeste Borchorst Faurschou. In between those songs, the Swiss composer Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir (1922-1926) is sung, which for many years lay in the composer's desk drawer without being performed. He considered the work to be a personal matter between himself and God. He was content to have written the work and had no need to initiate a wider public into its existence. The Mass is otherwise an astonishing and unique achievement, built on the traditional liturgical parts of the Catholic Mass. It shows a deep understanding and love of the church music of earlier times, from Gregorian chant and the balanced vocal polyphony of the Renaissance to the virtuosic lines and imposing formal language of the Baroque. But at the same time it is an unmistakable child of the 20th century. The work was written by a young man, but it was an ageing composer who heard the work at its first performance in 1963. Times thus flow together; both in Martin's life and in the work itself, where past and present meet. Martin's Mass for Double Choir occupies a very special place in the choral literature, and its great musical beauties have made it popular with singers and audiences alike.